How I Solved This Issue

My original post is below, but in case you’re reading this to find out how I solved the problem, I’ve inserted this edit to list all the changes I made:-

1. Created my own power plan by cloning the High Performance Plan and then modifying it so that (a) it never switches the laptop off/sleeps, (b) the disc never sleeps when connected to the mains.
2. Used the Device Manager to switch off  “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” on all USB hubs (right click on each hub > Properties > Power Management)
3. Used the Device Manager to disable:-
   1. The onboard soundcard (Realtek)
   2. The Ethernet (Realtek PCIe GBE)
   3. Microsoft ACPI – Compliant Control Method Battery
   4. All Bluetooth devices (I don’t use them)
   5. High Definition Audio Controller (under System devices)

I found using Latency Monitor especially helpful to find the problem areas.  There are other ideas you can try.  The following, that I found along the way, was the most straightforward guide, containing the above and more:-
https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/209571729-Windows-Tuning-Tips-for-Audio-Processing
I am extremely grateful to everyone who contributed to the solution, but I feel I should make a special mention of Geoff (gswitz) who went to the trouble of making a YouTube video!  You can find it here:-
https://youtu.be/eOVuzOja-yE
 
This concludes the edit I made after I was happy I’d found the solution; the following is the original post:-
 
 ______________________________________________________________

 ORIGINAL POST

My previous laptop (3rd gen i7 4-core) crashed and burned after 3 years use but it didn't have much of a problem with Sonar X3 through to Platinum.  My new laptop has a 7th gen i7 2-core and I was expecting great things but I'm just getting audio dropouts.  Most recently I was recording a sermon at church (so 1 audio channel - that's it) and there was an audio dropout halfway through so I lost the recording.  It was also accompanied by an insufficient memory message which makes no sense since I have 8GB of RAM.
With the new laptop I have tried to keep things simple so have removed bloatware and only installed Sonar Platinum (Feb 2017) with NI Komplete 9U.

Things I have tried so far:-

Most up to date driver for soundcard (Cakewalk/Roland UA-25EX)
  -  Couldn't do anything with this because Roland website only tells you that Win10 does this automatically, no file is available to download
Set Power Option to High Performance
 -  Actually, I modified it so it the laptop does not sleep
Set Power Option to High Performance
 -  Actually, I modified it so it the laptop does not sleep
Disabled Wi-Fi
 -  This was all I had to do on my old laptop.
Disabled Bluetooth
  -  Don't use it, but Cakewalk Windows Optimisation Guidelines (CWOG) recommended it so I did it
Disabled Power Management for USB Root Hubs
  -  At home I use a USB hub connected to USB 3 port.  This means there are 8 hubs to disable on device manager every time I use Sonar.  I was not using the hub for the dropout at church.  
Removed as much as possible from Windows Startup

Things I have NOT tried:-

BIOS Changes
  -  I don't feel sufficiently knowledgeable and I'm afraid something could go wrong
Raised a support call with Cakewalk
  -  Thought I'd try you guys first and I heard the support section is struggling with staffing at the moment
Exclude audio drives from search indexing
  -  Don't understand what this is (CWOG recommended it)
Disable anti-virus
  -  The wifi is disabled so how can this have an effect (I use Avast Free btw)?
Changed Preferences in Sonar
 
  -  I did change the ASIO latency at one point but it made little difference so I'm just using the settings that default for the UA-25EX.  Cakewalk did recommend using a "Wave Profiler" in something I read, but it's not where they said it was.
 
Now I'm getting concerned that every time I want to use Sonar I'm going to have to do about 10 different actions first.  This laptop is way above the minimum spec., so I can't understand why things are not "working out of the box".  Please don't tell me I should be using a desktop machine because (a) it's not an option, (b) I refuse to accept that Sonar Platinum won't work on a standard laptop, and (c) I understood that Sonar Platinum had been getting more and more efficient with resources.  Surely there must be something simple I've missed?  Please help!

The first thing I would try is to uncheck 64-bit double precision engine under Options.
Does the UA 25EX have an advanced mode ?
See if this helps.

There are a few things left to try, but most importantly, download resplendent latency monitor and it will show the dll that is messing you up.

Things I can think of now include turning off power saving on the network card by opening it from device manager and choosing properties.

It may be necessary to disable the battery charger, but latency monitor will answer that.

Hi Guys,
Thanks for the advice.
Chuck
64 double precision was already off and the Advanced switch on the UA-25EX was on.
gswitz
I will download the latency monitor and report back.  Not sure about turning off power saving on the network card - I always have the wifi device disabled anyway.

I am not sure what your ASIO Buffer Size is set to - but that might be an issue, if too small for example.  I COULD set mine down to 32 samples, but I usually leave it set to 129, because that is a pretty easy balance between latency and how hard the CPU has to work.
 
Additionally, please list every plugin your project had loaded into it - when you were recording your church service.  IF you use effects that are meant to be used in mixing, rather than in recording/tracking, such as any that use something called 'Look-Ahead Processing'.  Convoluted Reverb plugins tend to use that, and I believe Boost 11 is another one that may add a bunch of latency.
 
So, if you list all the effects plugins for that project, I would be happy to look them over and post back any thoughts I have on particular ones. (you could perhaps swap latency-inducing ones out for less consumptive ones until you finished your tracking/recording, and then swap them back in and bump your ASIO Buffer Size WAY up when you move on to mixing - then things like convoluted reverb plugins will function just fine - due to the increased buffer size.)
 
Also, you could take that project and try to temporarily BYPASS all of the effects - to very quickly see if that helps get rid of latency issues and audio problems.  To do that, Sonar has a key binding set to toggle the Bypass All Effects either on or off - so to toggle ON the bypass of all effects, you would hit the letter 'E' on your computer keyboard, and Sonar would not process anything through the loaded effects plugins.  If your audio latency/drop-out issues go away - that is a BIG clue that one or more of those effects plugins is probably not designed to be used when recording, because of its nature - needing a much larger ASIO Buffer Size, etc..  By the way, to turn OFF the bypassing of all effects, you would simply hit the letter 'E' again on the computer keyboard, and Sonar would toggle the effects processing back on.
 
Give the above a shot and please post back with the list of effects, as well as on the testing of the bypassing of effects.  Additionally, I would like to know what your ASIO Buffer Size is set to when recording in that project.
 
One more thing - your laptop MAY have CPU Parking in effect, where you aren't getting the full use of your multi-core processor.  You can launch Windows Task Manager (right click on Task Bar and click on Task Manager), then click on the Performance tab, then at the bottom left, click on Open Resource Monitor, then click on the CPU tab, and look at the cores displayed vertically on the right side.  You should see a display for CPU Total, then under that one for Service CPU Usage, then under that you should see each of your cores listed (CPU 0, CPU 1, CPU 2, CPU 3).  IF CPU cores 2-4 show Parked, you will likely benefit from disabling the CPU Core Parking.
 
So - please also take a look at the above and post back on whether or not the CPU cores are parked.
 
Thanks, 
 
Bob Bone
 

Hi Bob,
 
Thanks for the feedback.  The ASIO buffer is set to 320 samples.  I confirm I was using no plugins/effects at all for the recording - this is something I would do later, but not during the recording process.  I have checked the CPUs via the Task Manager and none of them are parked.  I also have checked them during Sonar playback and all 4 were working.

gswitz
There are a few things left to try, but most importantly, download resplendent latency monitor and it will show the dll that is messing you up.

Things I can think of now include turning off power saving on the network card by opening it from device manager and choosing properties.

It may be necessary to disable the battery charger, but latency monitor will answer that.

I loaded the Latency Monitor, ran it for an hour and it said the system was suitable for real-time audio without dropouts.  Before running the monitor I went into Device Manager and disabled wifi, bluetooth and USB hub power management.  
 

What speed is your hard disk that you are recording to and is it an external or USB drive?

dwardzala
What speed is your hard disk that you are recording to and is it an external or USB drive?

Hi Dave,
It's a standard 1TB disk, I assume it runs at 5400rpm but I can't find any more info on it, it's internal.

gswitz
There are a few things left to try, but most importantly, download resplendent latency monitor and it will show the dll that is messing you up.

Things I can think of now include turning off power saving on the network card by opening it from device manager and choosing properties.

It may be necessary to disable the battery charger, but latency monitor will answer that.

 
Oops, spoke too soon!  
 
At some point running Latency Monitor into the second hour, there was some kind of spike in "interrupt to process latency" that popped it into the category of "Your system seems to be having trouble handling real-time audio".
 
Almost all of the time Interrupt-to-process-latency runs around 70microseconds, but this spike popped it up to 1100microseconds.
 
Any idea how to track down the culprit?