Really Strange Plug In Layout Glitch

tl;dr: Go straight to 3rd paragraph.
 
Hey, I'm using Sonar Platinum and was a huge fan of Plug In Layouts because I'm using a Novation keyboard/midi controller that comes with Automap. When you activate Automap is creates an Automap version of every VST you have. The problem is that in the default plug in layout they don't show up as Automap!
 
So at first you'd have a version of Drumatic, activate Automap then go back to your list and it'd just say Drumatic, Drumatic and you have to guess which is the Automapped one and this happens for EVERYTHING. So Plug In layouts helped since every time I install a new effect I can go into layouts and put non-Automapped into a "standard" folder and the Automapped version into a "Automap" folder and rename them however I wanted.
 
Anyway not long ago I booted up Sonar and all of a sudden anytime I try to access synths from any menu, from the little + on a track or from the various menus on the right the only layout that shows up is "default" yet when I access effects my Automap layout is listed just fine. It's like all of my plug in layouts have been deleted for instruments only but not effects. It's hugely annoying since my list of instruments, when not sorted, just flows into a mess that I have to scroll through for 10 minutes before I can find what I want.
 
Does anyone know why this could be? I do know that it happened around the time I installed JBridge but I've only used JBridge to use 32 bit effects in 64 bit Sonar, not any instruments. Does anyone know what's going on or has anyone else had this problem?
 
Sorry for the long first post. This is seriously irritating me and makes using Sonar into an annoying chore. Especially since I spent about an hour creating those plug in layouts to begin with!
 
edit: By the way I tried creating a "Test" plug in layout file today with just a few instruments in it and it showed up just fine. So I thought it may be a file size issue so created a back up of the "Automap" layout and deleted as much as I could from the original and saved it. It still didn't show up, but "Test" still did. I even opened "Test" in notepad and swapped the contents with "Automap" (changing the name in the actual file etc.) and when I loaded "Test" it showed all of the folders from "Automap" but none of the instruments were there! It's really strange. I guess I could make a new file from scratch but am hoping there's an easy way to fix this.
 
Also it isn't only my custom layout file that's gone missing for instruments, it's the "Platinum Layout" file too.

Has nobody experienced this before? Sorry for bumping so often but I don't want this to happen again. I've spent about 3 days rebuilding the menu and it's great but I have zero idea as to why this happened to begin with. I'm considering just creating a backup image of my entire OS in case. It's setup perfect otherwise.

Sonar has a built-in bridge for 32-bit plugins.  No need to install JBridge for that.

abacab
Sonar has a built-in bridge for 32-bit plugins.  No need to install JBridge for that.

It's does? Thanks! This happened exactly around the time I installed JBridge. How does this work? Is it automatic or do I have to change some sort of setting? JBridge is working perfectly but obviously I'd like as little as possible to go wrong so would prefer to use a built in solution.
 
My problem with that was that when I installed Platinum and then Sonik Synth 2 it was crackling like CRAZY (which almost sounded cool and glitchy but wasn't what I wanted) then I installed JBridge and it's fine. How would I have fixed that without JBridge? Does it automatically bridge it? Because SOME 32 bit plugins were working okay and some not.
 
I'm using 64 bit Sonar Platinum by the way so was converting from 32 to 64. Thanks.

msmcleod
JBridge works by creating new 64-bit plugin dll's that wrap up the original 32 bit ones. Bit-bridge handles the 32-bit plugins through a single "service" point.
 
I use a combination of JBridge and Sonar's bit-bridge, as
(a) Bit-Bridge doesn't always work with some plugins and;
(b) JBridge not only gives more compatibility options, but allows you to select upsampling too (because as far as Sonar is concerned, it IS a 64 bit plugin)
(c) JBridge can also fix compatibility issues with 64 bit plugins
 
While we're on the subject of JBridge/Bit-bridge, I'm slightly dubious about the claims that JBridge/Bit-bridge have a big impact on performance. I did a fair bit of creating 32bit/16bit "thunking" DLL's in the 90's (when machines were much slower) and the performance hit in marshalling calls was minimal to say the least - we're talking microseconds.
 
M.

I'll just stick with JBridge anyway then. I'm surprised anyone would say there's a performance impact!
 
By the way this is way off topic but can I ask you something? I've been listening to a lot of Aphex Twin and reading about Radiohead creating Kid A and they talked about there being a crazy amount of plugins at the time. This surprised me. What kind of plugins were out there back then? Because they seems to get some insane sounds. Do you have any idea if any of these "glitching" plugins existed? Or was that just done manually by purposefully misusing equipment?
 
Sorry for the off topic-ness but it's something that's been bothering me, which plugins existed and how advanced they could get. (Because if I remember right my PC back in 2000 was maybe 300mhz and had 64mb of RAM and a 10gb drive!) It's just something I didn't think existed back then. I should maybe read up on the history.

I remember artists talking about mixing albums on Macs back in the 90's, but I doubt that PCs were to that level yet. 
 
It took a while before the drivers technology from Windows NT became mainstream in the consumer PC, allowing for stable real-time audio.  Windows 2000, and then Windows XP, built on NT which allowed the Windows platform to expand as a legitimate multimedia platform.  But the DOS based Windows prior to that just couldn't cut it.
 
I messed with some MIDI sequencing on Win 95/98, but that was about the extent of it... keeping audio outboard...