musicjohnnie
Hey scook,
Do you know what is wrong if you hold shift and start sonar and nothing happens. I haven't been able to  find safe mode yet. And also what is the good usage of safe mode.

Try right-clicking the SONAR icon or program and hold the SHIFT key while opening SONAR. SONAR should display a dialog about personalization.

 
Safe mode is invoked when opening a project while holding the SHIFT key. SONAR will display the Safe mode dialog.  The Safe mode dialog permits skipping some or all of the plug-ins in a project.

chuckebaby
have you tried launching sonar while holding down CNTRL ?

Yes, but not recently. I do not want to reset SONAR back to factory defaults.

scook

chuckebaby
have you tried launching sonar while holding down CNTRL ?

Yes, but not recently. I do not want to reset SONAR back to factory defaults.

okay I see what your saying. whats the difference between them ?
I know you said Factory defaults. but I still didn't understand, thanks.
 

Don't suppose any of these are Dell systems with either AlienRespawn or Backup and Recovery?
Doesn't seem like it from the descriptions, but if the Backup and Recovery is in play, then do a search for version 1.9 and update to that one, or uninstall it and use the built in Backup and Restore.
See this for details:
https://www.cakewalk.com/...NAR-2016-08-and-higher
 
No minidumps?
 
Please try running the app crash view from nirsoft to see if any of the recent crashes got captured by WER.  If so please send those in a report and post back the CWBRN.
 
Otherwise please follow the advice here and save off a crash dump.
 
https://www.cakewalk.com/...kewalk-program-crashes

Thanks Keith. Although the info you provided may or may not help Gary, it might help me with some of my issues.

chuckebaby
okay I see what your saying. whats the difference between them ?
I know you said Factory defaults. but I still didn't understand, thanks.

The full personalization CTRL when opening SONAR, overwrites files in the user directory, resets plug-in categories and some registry entries to defaults. The partial personalization, SHIFT when opening SONAR, replaces files missing from the user directory.

scook

chuckebaby
okay I see what your saying. whats the difference between them ?
I know you said Factory defaults. but I still didn't understand, thanks.

The full personalization CTRL when opening SONAR, overwrites files in the user directory, resets plug-in categories and some registry entries to defaults. The partial personalization, SHIFT when opening SONAR, replaces files missing from the user directory.

thanks Steve.
Im grateful for your explanation. I cant believe I didn't know the difference between these.
just did a few tests and figured this out as well. but the explanation was key. I appreciate your help.

garyhb
I'm not getting BSOD -  only blue spinning ball. SP becomes unresponsive or crashes when pressing play. 
Latest news: my PC reported a disk error on startup but ran WD SMART diagnostic and all criteria passed.
After some research I'm hedging it's the win10 anniversary update is maybe the issue. Going to rollback and chech again.

Hmm, disk error on startup?  smart won't necessarily help much there.  You should do a surface scan using one of the utilities from the drive manufacturer just to be sure.  As far as becoming unresponsive, could be the audio driver or other drivers need a refresh, so be sure to check those for updates. 
 
In the minidump instructions there's some guidance on creating a file if SONAR is hung.  So far my home Win 10 system has been ok.
 
Keith
 
 

Thanks everybody, turned out to be failed sectors on the hard disk - seemed to happen same time as the Anniversary update! Errors couldn't be fixed so backed up, binned and new ssd installed and everything sweet.
 
Many thanks again for all your suggestions - some I hadn't thought of too.
 
Best
 
Gary