Quick Start should understand crashes

I'm not sure I get 100% correct picture of the situation. Does your PC go to sleep mode, and crashes trying to wake up?
I've never gotten anything but problems using sleep mode with SONAR or any complicated application, so I've turned it off.

jkoseattle
...
Honestly, I'm waiting for a version that is announced with "We've added NO new functionality! We spent the last six months fixing everything that's already in there." THAT I will buy.

Has never happened with any version of any DAW software.  Ever.
 
They're all running a business, so it's disingenuous to think it could ever happen.  The best any software company can hope to do is fix as many issues that are widespread (the DEAL-BREAKERS), while adding new features.  I think CW has done a great job on this, particularly in the past two years. 
 
All that being said, I'm not entirely convinced your issues are due to Sonar per se.  X3 was solid for me -- yes, I still had the occasional crash, but nothing regular or like what you're describing.  Have you reached out on the forum to try and troubleshoot these issues?

KPerry
By recording (registry, which is where it's recorded anyway, numerically) when a project was *opened*, not when it was saved - that date then defines the most recent project.  That's a change to now, but a very logical one.

Is this something SONAR can do, or does it have to tell Windows? Seems it sometimes complications occur when SONAR tries to circumvent something where Windows has specific rules. Remember I don't know anything about code, though...maybe this is something where SONAR would have to cordon off part of the registry to store opened projects instead of just saved ones, and tell the Start Screen to always look if an opened project has a newer date than a saved one?
 
Although I just thought of something...I would hate for the Start Screen to do that, because for every project I open, I probably only save 1 in 10 anyway. A lot of times I open a project to try out a plug-in, test something to respond to a forum query, audition a microphone, etc. My Start Screen would be cluttered with a lot of useless entries. So I'd want a preference to specify whether SONAR considered most recently opened or most recently saved to be the Start Screen's priority.
 
At that point, my temptation is just to say "screw it" - I don't have problems with crashing anyway, so SONAR remembers what I was working on (as soon as I create a "keeper" project, I save it).

You *still* have that VS700?
 
IMO, there are 3 things of interest in the OP:
 
1.  Crashes
2.  Startup + project load times
3.  How Sonar keeps track of recent projects
 
(1) and (2) should be tracked down for sure and might make (3) less critical, although I have had times when I had to resort to File>Open to get to the last project I was working.  It would be nice if the list was updated early, but I personally don't see problems often enough consider this worthy of high priority.
 
(1) and (2) could be related if, for example, there is a marginal disk involved.  I would definitely check the system event logs for disk related error/warning messages. 
 
Defrag of drives might bring performance back to acceptable levels.  Configuring such that programs, projects+audio and samples are all on different drives might help too.
 
If the load times are long due to humongous project size or heavy sample use, then SSD might be an option to help alleviate startup pain.
 
 

BobF
You *still* have that VS700?

Yup, nobody wants it. I guess that's a sign from the SONAR Gods that I should just keep using it as a Mackie-compatible controller, and that I should use my sig to promote my upcoming web site 

Kev999
I'm sure that the OP understands that only the latest version of the software is maintained.

I make no such assumption
 

Kev999
Feature requests should not be restricted to current subscibers. Users of earlier versions who may potentially upgrade should not be discouraged from submitting their ideas.

The feature request area http://forum.cakewalk.com/Features-Ideas-f76.aspx is open to all forum users. I would encourage anyone with a feature request submit them there.

JonD

Kev999

JonD
...you are still on Sonar X3.
Not sure what you want the CW devs to do about that, since it's no longer being developed...

I'm sure that the OP understands that only the latest version of the software is maintained. Feature requests should not be restricted to current subscibers. Users of earlier versions who may potentially upgrade should not be discouraged from submitting their ideas.

 
I was addressing the fact that his system is constantly crashing, not about his feature request. 

Maybe I was reading too much into it. Sorry.

I save my projects as a habit constantly, asnd have even assigned it to a mouse button. HOWEVER< saving a project does not turn it into the most recent project in the dialog. That dialog only gets updated when you close the project entirely. 
 
Look everyone, I am certainly a fan of Sonar, as I have been using it exclusively for music since 1989. What it does is nothing short of a miracle. But the argument that it's better than the others holds no meaning for me. I want better than it was, not merely better than the competition. The reality for me is that it gets in the way and slows things down for me constantly, and always has. After 27 years of submitting repeated feature requests with none of them ever having been implemented, you can understand why I might be jaded now. My suggestions have been simple, obvious, and useful. 
 
Here are some:
* I don't care what color events are in PRV. I just want them so that if there are multiple tracks showing that I can tell them apart. I want Sonar to pick colors that are distinct from each other, and adjust them depending on how many tracks are displayed. 
* I want to quickly change the time signature for a single bar or sequence of bars. Musically it's much more common for a time sig change to be a transitory thing, but Sonar's time sig tool assumes any change goes to the end of the song, requiring two operations. And the dialog should have radio buttons for the most common time signatures. And why are the plus-minus buttons so microscopic? And why is the key change operation in the same dialog? And why is the only way to see where a time signature has changed by divining it from the width of the bar in track view? Why isn't there a big marker that says "Here it's now 6/4".
* I want it to be MUCH easier to insert bars into the middle of a piece. Even Selecting All and then carefully choosing to slide over everything when inserting time/measures does not get everything, because a second operation is required to also slide over bus envelopes. Why???? And why are there four Insert operations listed in the Project menu, when there's a perfectly good INSERT menu they would more logically be in?
* Why are Sonar's color palette selections so limiting? When I want black I don't want dark gray. When I want Yellow I don't want a dusty version of yellow.
* And don't get me started on take lanes