If your Dell laptop was issued with Windows 7 you might want to just stay with that. 
My wifes Lenovo laptop ( was W764)  is crippled since her tech at work upgraded it with a new SSD and installed W10. Windows 10 seems to try and use generic drivers for everything and Windows update is useless for finding the right drivers. And with Laptops some drivers are very specific and only written once for that model and that OS. So her video driver sucks, the screen resolution is wrong and no way to adjust it.. there's no camera or SD card reader either as Lenovo only supplies drivers for W7. 
She wants me to put W7 back in it. 

Cactus Music
If your Dell laptop was issued with Windows 7 you might want to just stay with that. 
My wifes Lenovo laptop ( was W764)  is crippled since her tech at work upgraded it with a new SSD and installed W10. Windows 10 seems to try and use generic drivers for everything and Windows update is useless for finding the right drivers. And with Laptops some drivers are very specific and only written once for that model and that OS. So her video driver sucks, the screen resolution is wrong and no way to adjust it.. there's no camera or SD card reader either as Lenovo only supplies drivers for W7. 
She wants me to put W7 back in it. 

 
I had the same problem with an older HP laptop after a win10 upgrade a while back. Luckily I had an image of the win 7 install, so was able to roll back and see what devices were missing drivers. Since then, before updating any PC I take a screen shot/s of windows device manager with all of the subfolders expanded and print it out. If after updating to windows 10 any generic drivers are installed I just check the device model/manufacturer on the Win 7 device manager printout and download the latest available driver from the component manufacturers website (rather than the PC manufacturer, who often do not post driver updates despite their availability). I am yet to find a problem that can't be resolved this way....touch wood! 

You might try having BlueScreenView scan your Windows dump file and look at its report.  This is a freeware Windows dump analysis tool that could help you figure out what is going on:
 
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html
 
Bob Bone
 

Yes but with her laptop W10 would not accept the W7 drivers, It would  tell me I already had the correct driver and refuse to install or just tell me it could not proceed. 
It's no problem finding the correct W7 drivers you shouldn't have to make screen shots. Just go to the manufactures web site and all the drivers will be listed. In the case of Lenovo there are no drivers for anything but Windows 7 in the drop down for OS. 
And I just ran into this with the rebuild of a friends Acer Windows 8.0 laptop. There were drivers for W7 and W 8.0 but nothing for W8.1 or W 10.    I have a W8.1 disk but was forced to install W7 ( no issue with this )  because you cannot easily find W8.0  anywhere. W 8.0 product key won't work with W 8.1.   He had never bothered to make the back up disks and his hard drive bonked out. 
 

Cactus Music
Yes but with her laptop W10 would not accept the W7 drivers, It would  tell me I already had the correct driver and refuse to install or just tell me it could not proceed. 

You probably already know this, but there are various ways to override driver installation depending on which version of Win 10 is installed. If I have misunderstood the problem just ignore me:)
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/take-back-control-driver-updates-windows-10/
 

Cactus Music
It's no problem finding the correct W7 drivers you shouldn't have to make screen shots. Just go to the manufactures web site and all the drivers will be listed. 

The printout is just for quick and easy reference AFTER installing win 10, when devices may show up as generic rather than with their specific make\model.
 

Cactus Music
 In the case of Lenovo there are no drivers for anything but Windows 7 in the drop down for OS. 

 
That's when I use my printout to check the name/model of the particular component that I am looking for a driver for and go to its manufacturers website (nvidea, Intel etc) rather than the laptop manufacturers website. I dont know about Lenovo, but certainly every laptop I have ever worked on uses third party components whose driver download pages are almost always more up to date than the computer manufacturers.
 

Cactus Music
And I just ran into this with the rebuild of a friends Acer Windows 8.0 laptop. There were drivers for W7 and W 8.0 but nothing for W8.1 or W 10.    I have a W8.1 disk but was forced to install W7 ( no issue with this )  because you cannot easily find W8.0  anywhere. W 8.0 product key won't work with W 8.1.   He had never bothered to make the back up disks and his hard drive bonked out. 

Oh the joys of windows registration Johnny:) I never did understand the convoluted free upgrade path restrictions.
 

I think the thread is spreading out into a Windows discussion!  Thanks for input resolving my issue. I shall try the BlueScreenView utility, Bob.  Not being someone who really delves into the innards of my PC (I do claim some level of proficiency - but not at the Windows system level!), I would prefer a "simpler" way out of this. May be I am asking for much - my question was with the existing hardware set up and Win 10 Home, I was able to run Sonar Professional without any problem.  Then, I took Cakewalk's offer of free lifetime upgrades and paid for and downloaded Platinum. And then all my woes begin!
 
I have a question: I have the ASMEDIA 106x SATA Controller to which my boot drive (C) is connected (SSD from Samsung) - how do I update the driver on this? I found a driver online, but Win 10 does not really let me complete this upgrade!  Wondering if this is the issue? Cannot understand it, as this worked with Professional earlier!
 
Thanks!

Chuck, Bristol_Jonesy, Bob Bone
Thanks for your suggestions earlier in this thread.  So, this is where I stand now:
I have the Profire 610 USB interface from MAudio as my sound card.  Yes, this remains on and connected during each start-up.
I downloaded Driver Toolkit and updated all the relevant drivers, incl the ASMedia driver I referred to above.
Completely uninstalled SONAR and all its elements incl the Command Center.
Updated drivers and went through a number of PC restarts for this.
CLEAN install of SPLAT through the Command Center (which I installed afresh).
Same problem on starting up SPLAT.  This time, I am able to view the minidump file using BlueScreen utility.
This is what this tells me at the last BSOD event this morning:
Caused by driver ntoskrnl.exe.  This is a system driver 'NT Kernel System' in Windows.
 
What next?  Is this something that can be addressed without having to reinstall Windows?  I am almost at my wits end, and Cakewalk support has been taking their time responding to my support call-out last week.
 
Thanks to all of you for your continued support!
Ananth

monusharun
Chuck, just listening to your Elements of Love - very nice!
 

hey thank you very much
 
give this a try,
I just did a little research on the ntoskrnl.exe and it could be caused by a problem with the dynamic link library in Windows/Sonar.
Start Sonar by holding down the CNTRL key. (Hold CNTRL + Double Click on the Sonar Icon on desktop)
when prompted by the pop up, click "Yes". This will re-personalize Sonar.
let it run the course of resetting the plug ins, exc. and see if this helped.
 
-What else I have learned is also a possibility of bad RAM. not sure how genuine that is though.
- Also make sure your windows are all up to date on updates.

monusharun
Completely uninstalled SONAR and all its elements incl the Command Center.

did you follow the "clean install guide" when doing this?
https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013372/Clean-Install-All-Cakewalk-Software
if not, some leftovers could've remained in the registry
good luck!

Thanks Chuck!  Well I tried what you suggested and that did not work either.  Still getting the ntoskrnl.exe error!
 
All my other software incl photo editing stuff that I use works just fine!  Win Office works fine!  iTunes runs perfectly - and the system does not crash otherwise.  It is ONLY when I attempt to open SPLAT and after the initial project window opens up for selection of a template - it just hangs and then the BSOD!
 
Pwalpwal: yes the CLEAN install has been completed at least 5 times since I have been having all these difficulties. I have followed all instructions to the T!
 
This is getting quite frustrating and now I am beginning to really curse myself for doing the upgrade to SPLAT.  Sonar Professional was working perfectly on my system before this upgrade!  So what changed??
 
Ananth