Sonar X3 Display & Functionality Problems -- perhaps NVIDIA-related?

EDIT 4: Problem Resolved! Puttin' this baby to bed!!!
Although it's unlikely that anybody cares or is following this thread on such old software and hardware, I like to follow-through on the off-chance that somebody may run into a similar situation and stumble across this post as a result of a net search someday. This resolution also applies to a related, earlier forum thread that can be read here.

 
I can now state with a reasonable degree of confidence that, at least in my experience:

1. The aging Delta 8-channel 1010LT audio interface card is capable of running on a 64-bit Windows 10 Pro computer, using the last-available driver software released for Windows 7.
2. Sonar X3e also appears to run without the problems previously documented in this thread. I've located the cause of the display and functionality issues, and can cause them to appear or disappear on-demand. The short version is, I found an incompatibility between an older, somewhat obscure system utility that I routinely run on most of my computers. (currently have 7 desktops running throughout the house...)

Without going into more laborious detail than is necessary, I will mention that I was able to run the Windows 10 Pro/Sonar X3/Delta 1010LT combination successfully after installing on a different computer late last summer. Didn't even think to provide an update here. But then I had a hard drive problem last month, and replaced my system drive with an SSD, which I loaded from a pre-Anniversary Update Windows 10 Pro image.
 
I was able to recover my Cakewalk/Sonar directories from the faulty drive, and re-installed Sonar, along with a number of other programs that I use regularly. To my horror, when I started X3 and tried to load some of my projects, just to check them out, I found out that all the interface issues and program freezes were back! Sometimes, I couldn't even open the project before Sonar locked up. Other times, I could open a project and play it, albeit without being able to see the time or use any of the other transport controls. Often I'd have to go into task manager and kill it to shut Sonar down. Very depressing, especially after spending the $ to upgrade my system drive to an SSD! I didn't have the heart to try to figure this out, and put it on the back burner for about a month.
 
Finally, I summoned up the courage to give it a shot, and beat my head on this problem one more time. X3 just wouldn't cooperate, behaving the same way it had after replacing the hard drive. But while I was playing, I noticed a subtle peculiarity in the main program window, one that I wouldn't have guessed would indicate a problem, but appeared worth taking a look at, especially because of how easy it was to test system behavior after making only the most modest of changes.
 
I use a handy little program called FileBox eXtender, which adds several useful functions to the title bar of open windows, and also provides a taskbar icon that allows quick access to favorite folders that you frequently use. My main use is the handy ''pushpin" that appears in a window's title bar, forcing that window to stay on top of others, something I often need to do. It's one of those utilities that I almost always load onto my machines. (Keyword="almost". Apparently, I didn't have it running on my music recording machine BEFORE the hard drive crash, but did put it on AFTER restoring the system to operation...)
 
I simply quit FileBox eXtender and called up X3, loaded the biggest project file in my Cakewalk folder, and BINGO! It worked! The X3 Skylight interface sprang to life, all the controls were active, it played back without a hitch, paused and stopped upon command. Everything I tried simply worked just as they should. I was ecstatic! But, just to be sure, I had to toggle FileBox eXtender back on. I wasn't surprised that Sonar quit working when I did this, and much-relieved when turning off the program again restored Sonar to full functionality.
 
It turns out that FileBox eXtender knows that it's not compatible with all programs, and the setting options include the ability to easily add programs as 'exceptions', which won't attempt to use the extended functionality. That's cool, because I can still use it with other programs, and have it automatically turned-off when I want to run Sonar.
 
I'm VERY happy to have finally resolved this, but a little bummed, because it caused me to miss out on a decent upgrade offer from Cakewalk. Sometime last year, they were offering an upgrade to a more modern version -- don't remember exactly what it was, maybe Sonar Producer? -- at a very attractive price. I was tempted, but I tried the trial version, and it acted just as flaky as X3 did. I figured that it was just a case of hardware incompatibility, and that I'd be wasting my $. Now, it turns out that it was a simple freeware utility that was at-fault all along.
 
Again, I'd like to thank Ken/Zargg and the others who tried to help me out when this was originally posted, and hope you're all doing well with your music projects.
 
EDIT 3: After installing both the 32 and 64 bit versions, and observing the same startup delay issues, I decided to go all the way back to X1 Essential, which has never been installed on this Windows 7 Pro machine. Upon completing the installation I started it up and loaded a project. Not unexpectedly, I had the troubling responsiveness that has plagued me from Day 1 with X3. Just for the heck of it, I decided to set the compatibility mode for X1 to Windows XP. SP-3, which is what it ran under on the machine that I'd been using with all my prior Cakewalk software iterations. IT RUNS FINE - no startup issues at all. It loads every project that I've tried, even ones written with X3, including the 64-bit version. I load the project, and, BOOM! -- it's ready to go. All the appropriate controls are alive and functional.

 
Unfortunately, I can't even try XP compatability mode on X3, as I'm only presented with choices for Vista and Server 2008, and they don't work. This is very frustrating!
 
EDIT 2: Well, it looks like I spoke too soon. I played with it and loaded several projects, which all loaded quickly and were 'ready-to-go' without any fiddling with the interface to wake things up. Then, while trying to fine-tune the Control Bar, I inadvertently chose something that sent it back into messed-up mode. Bad news is, I have no idea what menu choice sabotaged me!
 
EDIT 1: Read on only if interested or if you have a similar problem. I have resolved this madness by rolling back my NVIDIA display drivers to the 2nd most current version and doing a clean install of X3a and updating to X3e. Everything seems to now work as-expected.
 
Ouch...
I've searched and read a lot of articles here concerning Sonar X3 crashes/freezes, and this thread comes closest to describing the frustrating problem(s) I'm having. Rather than adding to that older thread, I figured starting a fresh one would make my issue more visible. Very sorry for the length of this, but feel it's necessary in order to adequately describe how I got here and what I'm experiencing.
 
I'm not at my 'DAW' right now, so I can't give specific hardware specs -- a general description will follow a bit later, but here's a brief summary of where I'm at:
 
I've been inactive with recording for the past 7 or more years. Prior to that, I used GT-2, Gt-3 & GT4-Pro on a 32-bit Windows XP Professional machine. GT4-Pro ticked me off bigtime, because it removed the ability to simultaneously record on 8 tracks with my Delta 1010 audio card. (What the heck kind of 'upgrade' removes crucial functionality of the previous version?)
 
I contacted Cakewalk about this, and they generously offered Sonar X1 Essential for an attractive upgrade price to mitigate the lost functionality of GT4 Pro and utilize the Skylight interface and new features. I installed it, but really didn't invest much time in trying to learn it, as my band was on-hiatus, with an uncertain future. So I didn't need to do any recording.
 
Subsequently, I was offered Sonar X2 Essential. which I never installed. After that, I also received upgrade offers for Sonar X3, which I purchased, assuming that if I did resume recording, it would probably be on a more modern O/S than Windows XP, and the new O/S may not run the older versions.  I didn't install X3 right away - in fact, I actually bought it twice, because Cakewalk sent me offers twice more than 6 months apart, and I forgot that I'd bought it in April '14 when the December '14 offer came in. (sheesh....)
 
Anyway, I finally decided that it was time to move my recording to more modern hardware and O/S. I did some research on compatibility of my Delta 1010 LT and the various versions of Sonar that I'd purchased, and settled on a 64-bit Windows 7 Pro machine (8 gigs of memory) that I was using as a general-purpose computer. That seemed to fit all the criteria/limitations that my hardware and Cakewalk software versions imposed on me.
 
So I installed both the 32 and 64 bit versions of X3 on this machine, prior to moving the Delta audio card, just to see if they would run, using some old bundle files from the previous versions I'd been using. (Yes, I've since read about potential problems with bundle files, but that's another subject that's not really relevant at this point...) When I tried to run either the 32 or 64-bit versions, there were problems. I actually don't remember what problems they were, but I wound up uninstalling both, and reinstalling just the 64-bit version. This was before seeing the instructions on doing a clean reinstall, so I removed it via the uninstaller and cleaned up the registry with Ccleaner, which may or may not have caught all the entries Cakewalk specifies for removal.
 
After the reinstall, I felt that there was no way to effectively evaluate the performance without moving the machine to the music room, installing the Delta and trying it out. While I have had some success loading bundle files from GT-Pro 4 and X1 Essential, and have been able to create new recording projects, the behavior of X3 has been frustratingly wonky, at best. The symptoms are varied and inconsistent. It's difficult to describe them - I should probably to a video screengrab to show some of the erratic behavior in action.
 
But here are some of the oddities:
 
1) On loading a project, portions of the interface are either grayed-out/unavailable, or missing entirely. The 'Now time' display box is almost always empty. None of the screenset buttons appear active. The entire display appears static, in fact. Audio waveforms usually appear, but they have that grayed-out, 'unavailable' appearance.
 
2) I found out that I could 'wake things up' a bit by clicking into the one of the audio waveforms to position the cursor to some arbitrary point in the file, because the 'move to start' button in the transport doesn't work. This seems to cause some of the functions to light up and become active.
 
3) At this point, all the transport buttons are grayed-out, but I can usually start playing the project with the Play button. Oddly, the Stop button doesn't stop playing, but the Pause button will. Of course, while playing, there's no evidence of the Now time or anything else dynamically updating. The waveforms do show up, but there's no cursor movement.
 
4) If my project was using a screenset that included a list of markers in the docking area at the bottom of the display, it will be blank. If I click into this area, the information for that marker will display, but the rest of the block remains blank. I can 'turn them on' by continuing to click in this area.
 
5) What seems to activate nearly all the functionality of the displayed windows is by selecting one of the 10 screensets. This causes areas that were blank to show their contents, and for functions that were grayed-out to illuminate and indicate their availability. From that point, the selected screenset button indicates that was just selected, although I have to switch to a different one to completely 'enable' all the other functions and features on the screen. From there, things seem to work somewhat normally. I'm generally able to record/playback/edit - the basic functionality of the program.
 
But I have to be careful and save frequently, because when I try to something I haven't previously used, it often results in a freeze, and I have to close the program via Task Manager.
 
Pending some of your recommendation, here are some of my thoughts & future attempts at remedy:
 
* It almost seems like the display issue could be a driver situation, so I've looked at Nvidia, which shows that I'm using up-to-date drivers. The previously-reference similar thread mentions that using old drivers may help, and I'll investigate, keeping in mind some things already mentioned in the thread.
 
* I'll try a clean reinstall, closely following the Cakewalk directions in the FAQ. And, yes - I did find the X3e update, which appears to be the final version of X3. To be clear, in case someone wants to know, my version is - I guess - what's referred to as the 'base' version of X3, as the term 'Essential' was dropped with the demise of X2. So I'm not running X3 Platinum, Producer, etc.
 
If anyone has experienced similar oddities or has ideas that may help me resolve these issues, I would greatly appreciate you suggestions.
 

Hello, Ken -- we meet again! (You responded to my cries for help when I first started messing with this thing about a month ago.) It got so I could use X3, but the delays & weird display issues started to become more than I could handle, thus today's followup.
 
In fact, while I was hoping for a reply of some kind to come it, I took the following steps.
 
1) Rolled back my NVIDIA driver to the 2nd most recent version. The problems persisted.
2) Did a clean install of X3 according to Cakewalk's specifications in the Knowledge Base.
 
Whaddya know? It worked! All the projects that I opened started up quickly and all the parts of the display that I expected to be active looked correct. I was pretty happy!
 But I was never one to avoid tweaking something until it breaks, so I thought I'd go back to the current NVIDIA driver. Now I'm back to X3 being crippled again.
 
Just did a system restore to set the clock back to Friday. And I'll repeat the steps outlined above. If it gets me back in the water, I'll not touch it again, promise!
 
Once again, thanks. Just for the sake of completeness, I'll come back and answer the questions whether or not the uninstall/reinstall works...
 
Take care,
Chuck

Regarding windows sounds, I have them disabled (just the windows sounds). I should have been more precise. I have it as playback device, but disabled windows sounds. Sorry for being confusing.
I still have the possibility to play Youtube, Soundcloud etc. 
All the best.

Firstly, make sure your update your installation of X3 to X3e
 
Secondly, locate and delete your Aud.ini file - this will be re-created the next time you start Sonar.
 
64 bit files won't run on a 32 bit system

Hi.
 
The 2nd statement regarding deleting the aud.ini file can apply to any system - 32 or 64 bit.
 
This "fix" has been known to solve otherwise seemingly intractable problems.

By default it is located in C:\Users\"yourname"\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\SONAR Platinum.

cbrillow
 wondering if there's anything in Cakewalk projects that are specific to the bit depth of the software and O/S that created them.

no

scook

cbrillow
 wondering if there's anything in Cakewalk projects that are specific to the bit depth of the software and O/S that created them.

no

I didn't think so, either, and my experiment described below seems to confirm this...

Did you try to run the 1010 in compatibility mode?

Hope it helps. If not, come back
All the best.

Maybe try to find the .exe in M-Audio folder (Program Files\M-Audio I would guess), right click and choose compatibility mode there as well. It might be worth a try.
All the best.

I meant the software panel, not the driver(again sorry). It has been a few years since I had my 1010, and it was under Vista/7. IIRC I had it running under X64 Win7. I always used ASIO with it.
Agree with it being strange that it works in X1, and not X3. This leads me to believe that there is hope.
You might need the help of someone with more skills than me, though
All the best.