O.K. so I took care of the battery, this was already done awhile ago.
 
I tweaked the services.msc, I heard of this a long time ago and never really pursued it until now.
 
I changed to the legacy driver, which I had not ever considered before, but had read about awhile ago, I just thought that I had really addressed that issue with the new TI chipset.
 
I fired up Sonar and no more pops. In fact I am now running at 128 for the buffer, with no problems. I do have one question though.
 
I clicked on the ASIO button and changed from 256 to 128 and then closed that. I then navigated to another buffer adjustment and changed them to 256. I think they are called record buffer or something, as I don't have the program available to look at, so I apologize for not being able to clearly explain, but it is the adjustment that is close to the bottom of the page and there are two side by side. I do not know what is the correct setting for those, or what they do.
 
I will say that for now I am amazed. No pops no clicks.
 
This might all blow up when I try to record 12 drum mics, a bass guitar (direct) and my guitar (either miced or thru TH2) all together. Then again, it might just work fine. The only plug in I would consider using while tracking is TH2, and I am not sure I am completely on board with that, as I really like my tube amps.
 
I will adjust the HDD for DMA settings.
 
And, I will keep you all posted on the progress. I will continue to play alone until we really tax it on Saturday, when we record.
 
I thank you all for your very wise help on this.
 
Just for the sake of full disclosure...I am running Win7 Pro 64Bit. In an effort to optimize this laptop I flashed the bios on this machine and have been getting the dreaded "This is not an authorized version of Windows", and of course it constantly reminds me of this with pop ups. I thought at some point it was going to shut me down, and I was unable to get updates, but now I can get updates and have worked on resolving this, but with no success. I rolled back or deleted all updates going back as far as a year ago and even removed SP1, only to re-download it all again without success. I don't think this has anything to do with my latency problem so I just gave up. I thought there was some odd issue with licenses, but then remembered the bios flash and how Windows does not like this sort of activity and will react as it has for this laptop.
 
Anyway THANK YOU all so much.
 
I will post on Sunday, the results of Saturday's tracking effort.
 
 

If you are recording 12+ mics, get a desktop, LOL.
Here are some suggestions for getting the most out of a less than killer PC.
 
As a rule when recording you can drop the buffer size to the minimum that works in that situation.
This will give lowest latency so you can record while monitoring existing tracks and not be out of sync. For recording along with existing material, latency should be <=10ms max.
If existing material has lots of effects or synths then freeze or bounce some of these tracks to audio to reduce the load on the CPU. When you do this, the CPU is not calculating the audio waveform in real time, it is simply playing back a wav file so it can process a lot more tracks.
 
If you are recording only live tracks w/o monitoring existing tracks, like recording a live gig, latency really does not matter and you can bump up the buffer size without worrying. You will get a delay if you monitor the live recording tracks with phones though. Some interfaces allow you to monitor the direct signal to avoid the delay.
 
When mixing you can bump the buffer size up to the max that works. Here you don't really care about latency since you are playing back only. Again though, if CPU load becomes an issue then freeze or bounce tracks to audio. I do this with sample synths like addictive drums, kontakt, etc.
 
The thing that really frustrated me when I started with DAWs ...If you adjust the buffer size to the absolute lowest possible setting w/o pops or clicks, do not expect that setting to work with every project. You may have to bump it up when the project becomes complex. You may find a happy medium for buffer size where it works for all the projects you are doing but if you encounter the pops in a new project, bump up the buffer size and/or do the freeze/bounce thing.
 
Re: second buffer setting, I think you are looking at the read/write disk caches. I never really tweak these. I think they are primarily for slow HDDs or external drives, maybe someone else could chime in on this.
Anyway, glad you solved the issue.
-Michael
 

Michael,
 
Thanks man...I have two PCs. A desktop for Purrfect Audio, which is for mixing/mastering. It is located in an acoustically treated room.
 
The laptop is downstairs in the tracking room with all the instruments. Our intention is to eliminate all instruments from the tracking room, except drums, and then record live. Guitar & Bass will be direct. This way may or may not work.
 
At least we will have a chance at getting a good "click" track and if necessary, overdub individual parts.
 
You are correct...it is the Read/Write Cache...as my memory serves. I agree with you. I don't think tweaking there does any good for my scenario, so I will return the values back to default 512K.
 
Thanks to all...I will keep you posted.

Recording audio puts very little strain on a CPU, A fast Hard drive is way more important. 
I use an old Acer laptop,  Pentium 4, 2.4 single core, 1.5 Gigs of RAM. Hard drive 7200 RPM
The OS and all that update crap has nothing to do with recording as far as I'm concerned, as long as you have the drivers for the Audio interface.
Only thing was it was 32 bit, but because no plug ins were used it was not a problem to open the projects on the 64 bit version desktop. All we wanted was the audio tracks.  
I used my Tascam us1641 which even has funky drivers. It's round trip latency is terrible, but that doesn't seem to matter for recording 16 tracks of audio and MIDI at the same time. 
My only issue was with the screen graphics being supper slow. It had trouble drawing the waveforms in real time. 
We used this set up night after night on and off for over a year without any crashes or freeze ups. 
Like I said, make sure you have a good clean , empty ,fast hard drive..SSD if possible. 
OS & Sonar nothing else. 

No tracking on Saturday...sorry.
 
With regards to Sonar not executing.
 
The only way I could get this to work was to completely remove all SW including interface.
 
Start over.
 
Works, but now pops and clicks.
 
Still working on it.
 
Odd that I experienced a short time with perfect results and then complete failure.
 
 

Pragi,
 
I am using stock fire wire cables.
 
I am using a high end hand made cable for my guitar.
 
I am not sure I have answered your question.

I purchased these cables separately from Cables to Go...the hi-end ones.
 
Where should I have bought them?
 

But if this are high end (firewire)cables- this can´t be a reason, except it´s demaged.
Once I had similar prob with my desktop pc ,
don´t know if it helps in your case:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Pops-and-crackles-with-a-twist-m2953259.aspx
regards

You said you removed interface SW?
Then go back and make sure the firewire driver is still legacy.
Re: cables.
The length can make a big difference, prob more than cable manufacturer. Use the shortest firewire cable you can get away with.
My interface barely connects with a 10ft cable. Works perfectly with a 3ft cable.
I was recording at my friend's studio (same Tascam interface as mine) . I had just bought a used tube pre-amp. After a couple of takes I started to hear an intermittent noise in my monitored guitar track. I suspected the pre-amp but we eliminated that. After about 2 hours of checking everything under the sun, I replugged the firewire cable on the computer end.  Been fine for 6 months.
re: windows.
Sounds like you have laptop stability issues. I don't think Windows update should fix a boot problem. Cause one possibly but not likely to fix one.
I would run scandisk after any kind of Windows 7 crash.

Legacy...confirmed.
 
Cable length...3 feet. I will unplug and re-insert.
 
I will run scan disk.
 
The only other thing I can think of is that I used to run Security Essentials...completely disabled, of course, but used when necessary, after updates etc.
 
Then I took the advice on this forum and loaded CCleaner, Avast and Malwarebytes. Completely disabled of course, but maybe I should re-consider.
 
Thanks...I will keep you posted. No rehearsal...I have the flu.
 
 

Well, after all of your help I don't think there will be a solution for this.
 
We recorded and suffered thru pops/clicks. I think our set up is just too taxing for this laptop.
 
Thanks anyway.
 
Time to start saving for a new PC.