I am not arguing that.
 
My point is make them feel the issue as early as possible so they can get crackin that much earlier. It is bad enough they have a shortened phone support timeframe. help support earn their paycheck.
 
Again, I am saying to pay attention to the forum suggestions but get TS involved as early as possible. I am only advocating helping Cakewalk FEEL the pain if a user can't get something working as soon as possible and time permitting.
 and the issues will be documented and not just floating in a forum somewhere.

Well it's just an opinion and you make excellent points as well...

This happens to me often. A user logoff and log back works for me and is much faster than a reboot.

Hello you all!
My first post here from memory.... since the News Group time :)
 
From readings made on some forums, it is an old problem for Cakewalk users. Some have had this issue as far as Pro Audio 8, on 32 bits systems as well. On my side, I just migrated from X2 to X3. I had this behavior with all the Sonar incarnations, 32 and 64 installs and X3 does not solve this annoying thing. Moreover, I observed that sometimes, with big projects, I had up to 4 instances of Bitbridge left opened in Task Manager on X2. After loading one on X3d, I am at the same point. I have to close them to have my Dakota/Montana/Sierra rig available and re-open Sonar. Hopefully, I have a stable, optimised/trimmed system that does not crash often, but I'd like to get the final word on this issue... It appears to be happening to many people with different setups, big or small. I am pretty sure it is common to many users that do not dig enough to get a clue about it. It is my understanding that Cakewalk tech staff is aware of this, but I wonder why there is no one of them posting a check list to help...
 
 

It's worth noting there's two problems here: one is a VST problem with the plugin and it's crashing SONAR. Two is the locked driver and needing to cold boot to release it. 
 
I'm getting tons of these in an old project I just opened in X3. Since it's Amplitube2 that's causing the ruckus I'm slowly trying to emulate the patches in TH2 so I can migrate away from the trouble. Of course, the labor loss is terrible. I swear after this album I'm going to do as many projects with the included plugs as possible. 

Per John and Wicked ...
 
My audio-interface is oft the culprit.  Octa-capture especially (even with latest drivers) ... 
 
Rebooting that audio-interface TWICE fixes my task-manager issues with X3d (and all the other Sonars).
 
(The problem occurs when I click stuff too fast)

HI. You might try, before going the reinstall sonar route, COMPLETELY removing all reference to your interface in windows including the registry. I don't believe you should have to reboot/log off to free sonar unless your audio interface drivers are fried. Used to happen to me with X1 and echo audio drivers.
 
If you do reinstall sonar be sure to use the "run as administrator" option.
 
mel

...wicked
This happens to me on certain crashes. Ever since I got the Octa-Capture it happens more often.
 
Powering down the audio interface usually frees the process so it can be killed. So that would be:

• power down audio interface
• kill sonarpdr in task manager
• power up audio interface
• try opening SONAR again

Most times this works. Sometimes SONAR will refuse to see the audio interface on reboot, in which case a system restart is needed. 

Is the OP able to shut down his "unknown" audio interface? On my machine I can't, I have to shut down the computer to shutdown the audio interfaces (2xM-Audio Delta1010)

I'm having almost exactly the same problem. And i'm on windows 8, so yes, I don't believe it's a windows issue. If I use ASIO as my driver sonar refuses to work.  If I use wdkms it works, but locks as soon as I stop the track. This all started when I bought a focusrite interface. I was using a lexicon interface, which worked fine with sonar 8, but X3 refused to recognise it as a midi driver.  Given lexicon no longer supported this product i decided to upgrade. To be honest, I'm pretty much at the end of my rope with X3. I am NOT even remotely interested in going through many of the processes listed on here.  Sonar need to make a program that simply works once installed (with maybe a few tweaks).  I've never used any daw but sonar, and up until about 4 months ago i used 8 without any dramas (apart from the usual sonar instability).  Since changing to x3 it's been a constant nightmare. I HATE what they've done with the selection tool, which constantly has me searching the online manuals for how to do the most basic of processes, and it's just miles too glitchy. I'll download the updates today and try them, but if they don't fix the problem I'm done.  Really annoys me, as this is not a cheap program, and i loved sonar 5 and 8, they were so user friendly.  For years the customer base has been asking sonar for nothing but a more stable program, and here, it appears they've released the most unstable version yet.  STOP with adding plug ins etc, and just MAKE IT STABLE.  Was at a friends place the other day and he was using a daw i've never even heard and it didn't crash, glitch, or lock up once, and he knows next to nothing about daws, he simply installed it and ran it.  And it works.  Is that really so hard SONAR?

OP, if you haven't already, take a few minutes and uninstall/reinstall your audio interface drivers/software. These hangs are almost always a resolute of the audio driver acting weird. On my system the new Realplayer cloud app causes sonar to not load so I can't let realplayer update itself.