SONAR DEAD! Are these my options?

Sad but true.

Just letting you all know . . . 8.5 still works!

Cactus Music
Option 3. I am going to order a new SSD for my C drive , install everything up o date and unplug it from the network. Hopefully none of the 3rd party stuff will nag me. I've been nagged by all 3 of my on line activators this last couple of weeks and all becuase of W10 updating. Just think,, 5 or more years of peace,, just make music,, no computer hassles.. maybe this is a blessing in disguise. At least my latest Sonar update seems to run smoothly. 
 
I see no reason to abandon Sonar,, it does more than I'll ever need, so I see no benifit in changing. Besides I'm going to get my $150 worth yet. 

With you all the way Johnny
 
My DAW is only ever connected to the network for product updates, I'm still running Win 7 so i'm just going to bide my time, see what happens and keep making music

There won't be anything from Gibson because there won't be a Gibson. 
 
There's no reason we won't be able to keep a computer going for say 10-12 years,, I still have a Dell XP computer than I think is from 2004. 

Slugbaby
My DAW PC is off the network.  It'll stay that way. I'll keep using Splat until the computer starts failing.
When that happens, i'll look for another DAW.  And it WON'T be anything under the Gibson umbrella, if they have anything at that time.
 
And yesterday I decided to purchase the rolling updates on my next paycheque...

That sucks big time
I'll also keep my studio pc offline for a while.
I hope things get sorted before then

Presonus Studio is  a great piece of software as Craig mentioned  it's pretty close to Sonar.

amiller
1) Start a VERY long project to export ALL of my stuff and import what I can into a new DAW and start learning a new DAW from scratch and re-mixing everything in the new environment...YUCK!

2) Stay with a now dead DAW and hope that Windows updates don't break it...YUCK

3) Freeze Windows updates unplug from the network and use my SONAR DAW as a standalone DAW with no Internet connection and be stuck in time...Yuck!
 
Other options...anyone?

fitzj
Presonus Studio is  a great piece of software as Craig mentioned  it's pretty close to Sonar.

amiller
1) Start a VERY long project to export ALL of my stuff and import what I can into a new DAW and start learning a new DAW from scratch and re-mixing everything in the new environment...YUCK!

2) Stay with a now dead DAW and hope that Windows updates don't break it...YUCK

3) Freeze Windows updates unplug from the network and use my SONAR DAW as a standalone DAW with no Internet connection and be stuck in time...Yuck!
 
Other options...anyone?

I think option 3 and add: start saving for a new computer is what will work for me.

All the corperate syetms are still W7 and for good reasons. Security and compatability with hardware. I work in a Hospital. We have over a 100 computers all working 100% day in day out doing everything from email to monitoring peoples vitals. All W7. The techs say they will get about another 7 or 8 year out of the OS. 
 
I'm sorely tempted to re install W7 to my main DAW,, but I'd loose the $100 paid for W8.1. 

 Sadly in our ever evolving computer world, we become thrilled to new enhancements that sometimes fire up our creative juices, so the joy of creating music becomes thrilling. I have to admit I sailed from home studio six then entered Sonar series, up to X3d. 
 
 Along the way there are always development bugs, simply unavoidable, I noticed that with 8 series, got kinda cluttered, sure it had enhancements, but I created a lot of good tunes with 4, stayed with it for quite awhile.
 
 The bottom line is the music retail business is losing big $ ...some article that was published by a prominent business magazine quoted some large losses of some big players competing in this industry, there is more to come.
 
 Software has eluded me over the years, at one time during the Twelve Tone days new versions were churning up the community with excitement, I was kinda part of that, not in a big way, sometimes things got a little bumpy.
 
On an old Pink Floyd film produced (LIVE at Pompeii) one of the band members quoted "you gotta have it in your head in the first place to get it out!" He was referring to the fact that even back in the 70's the technological marvels of that age, still required creativity of us to make music.
 
 Look at us now, the DAW really has evolved as a wonder music tool, we can manipulate errors to fix things, now don't kid yourself, the power of computer music sometimes wants to take control, such as mixing algorithms, third party services. 
 
 My vision of DAW isn't so much on the computer doing all those things, rather more of more realistic three dimensional modeling of mixers and plug ins, not the flat two dimensional images found on every current DAW platform.  
 
So my option, stay with what I have, its stable, see what comes further down the road.
 

Cactus Music
All the corperate syetms are still W7 and for good reasons. Security and compatability with hardware. I work in a Hospital. We have over a 100 computers all working 100% day in day out doing everything from email to monitoring peoples vitals. All W7. The techs say they will get about another 7 or 8 year out of the OS. 
 
I'm sorely tempted to re install W7 to my main DAW,, but I'd loose the $100 paid for W8.1.

Why would you want to go from Win 8.1 back to Win 7?  Win 8.1 is rock solid, with way more fixes and enhancements than Win 7. That's been my personal experience, and the few benchmarks I saw years ago easily back me up...
 
Now, Win 10 is a whole other story...

WRT #1, it may not turn out to be as YUCK as you expect

I've decided to do a version of option #3.  I have two PC's.  I use one for Internet services and the other is my dedicated DAW.  I'm going to permanently disable Windows 10 updates on the DAW PC.  No need to disconnect from the network since I don't use the net on that box except for DAW specific functions such as plugin downloads and third party recording related updates...i.e. Superior Drummer and the like.

All is not lost.  How long now have the rabid Ensoniq Paris users have kept that system alive?  It's just software.   It can be reverse engineered, it can be patched, and new drivers can be written to support new hardware.