A1MixMan
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 8:30 PM
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Goseba
(Don't tell me it is my system, all my other software works just fine).
So by this logic, I could send you my computer and Sonar wouldn't work if you installed it? Working super fabulous for me. See you on the Reaper forums! :-)
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soundtweaker
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 8:36 PM
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Middleman
Things that cause crashes in Sonar
1. Network Card conflict on the bus with either the video card or UAD cards.Possibly with Raid controllers.
2. Video cards and or drivers
3. Mothboards either bad or poorly designed for throughput.
4. Bitbridge set to other than automatic with UAD cards in the x64 environment.
5. midi controller driver issues.
6. Poorly written VSTs.
7. Bad memory chips.
8. Memory resident processes you don't need on DAW.
9. Too little memory.
These have been my experience.
Poorly written VST's include: Cakewalk Alias Factor Cakewalk Rapture Cakewalk Dimension Pro Cakewalk Modfilter Roland V-Vocal
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 8:38 PM
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A1MixMan
Goseba
(Don't tell me it is my system, all my other software works just fine).
So by this logic, I could send you my computer and Sonar wouldn't work if you installed it?
Working super fabulous for me.
See you on the Reaper forums! :-)
Or Sonar just hasn't been written well enough perhaps. EDIT: Feel free to send me your computer though :-)
post edited by Goseba - September 26, 10 8:40 PM
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A1MixMan
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 9:56 PM
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soundtweaker
Middleman
Things that cause crashes in Sonar
1. Network Card conflict on the bus with either the video card or UAD cards.Possibly with Raid controllers.
2. Video cards and or drivers
3. Mothboards either bad or poorly designed for throughput.
4. Bitbridge set to other than automatic with UAD cards in the x64 environment.
5. midi controller driver issues.
6. Poorly written VSTs.
7. Bad memory chips.
8. Memory resident processes you don't need on DAW.
9. Too little memory.
These have been my experience.
Poorly written VST's include:
Cakewalk Alias Factor
Cakewalk Rapture
Cakewalk Dimension Pro
Cakewalk Modfilter
Roland V-Vocal
not exactly a ringing endorsment for Cakewalk VST's. I personally wish Cakewalk would focus more on the main program than the VST's. I can get VST's anywhere, I just want a stable DAW. (Sonar is very stable for me, though)
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A1MixMan
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 10:00 PM
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Goseba
Or Sonar just hasn't been written well enough perhaps.
Apperently it has been written well enough as it works GREAT on my system. Just because you can run other programs on your system doesn't mean Sonar or any other DAW will work fine. As some have posted, there can be ALOT of other problems with your system. And I know you don't want to hear that. Oh, and send me your address so I can send you my computer. I will be sending you a cashier's check for more than enough for shipping. Just cash it and send me back the difference. Thanks!
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 10:18 PM
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I don't have any problem that it works for a large number of people but I know I am not the only one experiencing problems. It would be good if it worked GREAT on everyones though.
I have had on this PC Reaper, Live 7 full, Live 8 Lite, Record and Reason, ext demo, Phrazor, Kore, and they ran/run fine without crashing or requiring to be reinstalled on a regular basis. Hence my logic that it is something to do with Sonar.
My PC exceeds the minimum specs therefore I expect it to work, as simple as that.
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A1MixMan
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 10:28 PM
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While I do have some crashes with Sonar, I've never had to reinstall it EVER and I've been using it since it was Pro Audio 9. I wish I had an answer for your problem though. It sure is fun when it's working right. I would guess there is a hardware conflick somewhere. I do find it encouraging that with all that other software, that you are still trying to install Sonar. I think that says something right there.
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alkie
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 11:02 PM
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I`m confused...why even post on this forum if your not looking to try and fix your problem? If your looking to jump ship then go ahead just do it...don`t bother us with this waste of time conversation.
Whoa.... to you ...oh...earth and sea...
for the devil sends the beast with wrath.....
because he knows the time is short.....
let him who hath understanding.....
reckon the number of the beast.....
for it is a human number...
it`s number is.....
666 So if JESUS rose from the DEAD Does that mean he`s the ORIGINAL ZOMBIE?
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 11:10 PM
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I sold Live 7 to get Sonar (but still have the Lite version). Years ago a friend I did music with had Pro Audio 9, I had a lot of experience with it and it was great. Later, I was using Live but sold it and bought Project 5 remembering my positive experience with PA9. Again I had problems (but not the crashes like I have with Sonar) and eventually dropped that for Live again. I like the feel of Cakewalk hosts and decided to go back to Cakewalk and try Sonar 8.5.
So twice I have sold Live to buy a Cakewalk product. Twice I have had software that has not worked properly (P5 was not too bad, mainly issues with VST's which I could get around by running them inside of Phrazor as a VST). If only I could sell Cakewalk products......I will not be caught out a third time.
I will only be reinstalling Sonar again (and probably again and again) so that I can export the songs out of it.
I feel somewhat cheated. Since I have young family, I try to be self funding - selling gear to pay for another piece. So money is a big issue for me, I didn't take buying Sonar lightly and knew it was NFR. I just wasn't expecting so many problems with it and that, for me, it would be so unreliable.
Yesterday probably was the final straw for me, closing down Sonar and then it not opening again 15 minutes later with nothing done on the PC during that time.
The depressing thing is that I already know the next time I get a chance to do some music, it won't be making music, I will be reinstalling Sonar again just to export my remaining work in it. Something I thought I would have completed yesterday.
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 11:19 PM
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alkie
I`m confused...why even post on this forum if your not looking to try and fix your problem? If your looking to jump ship then go ahead just do it...don`t bother us with this waste of time conversation.
Why bother to post in this thread then. Anyway, this is the second thread on this subject I have started. Last time it happened I got no solution other than to reinstall Sonar - which worked briefly before the problem reoccurred. What other solutions have been offered this time? Being told it is my PC is not a solution. If I have missed a solution in this thread, please let me know (not being sarcastic here). I have tried to answer others questions on specs etc. If you read my posts you will see that I like Cakewalk products, maybe I don't want to leave it, maybe I just feel like I have no option.
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Tom Riggs
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 11:22 PM
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You may not want to hear this but given the information you gave in an earlier post. I would suggest dumping Comodo. I have had multiple problems with that AV on customer systems. Software works then a day or so later it doesn't. Not Sonar other applications particularly backup software and drivers. Removing Comodo and reloading the "other" software again fixed it permanently. If you are using the free version I would suggest using the Microsoft Security Essentials instead.
Worth a shot and may save your investment.
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 11:32 PM
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Tom Riggs
You may not want to hear this but given the information you gave in an earlier post. I would suggest dumping Comodo. I have had multiple problems with that AV on customer systems. Software works then a day or so later it doesn't. Not Sonar other applications particularly backup software and drivers. Removing Comodo and reloading the "other" software again fixed it permanently. If you are using the free version I would suggest using the Microsoft Security Essentials instead.
Worth a shot and may save your investment.
Thank you. I haven't heard of Comodo being an issue before but I will try uninstalling it. AV only or Firewall too?
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John
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 11:40 PM
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Goseba
I don't have any problem that it works for a large number of people but I know I am not the only one experiencing problems. It would be good if it worked GREAT on everyones though.
I have had on this PC Reaper, Live 7 full, Live 8 Lite, Record and Reason, ext demo, Phrazor, Kore, and they ran/run fine without crashing or requiring to be reinstalled on a regular basis. Hence my logic that it is something to do with Sonar.
My PC exceeds the minimum specs therefore I expect it to work, as simple as that.
I have Sonar 8.5 on my system and have not had to reinstall it at all. I've had on the system from a few days after is came out. I have patched it as those appear. This is on a Vista OS at 64 bits. I don't know if you have listed your system or not but if you check most threads of this sort you will find most often a device is not working as well as it should. The device could be anything but most often its an audio device. The next thing are the plugins. They can be troublesome. Sometimes one wont know until a certain combination is used. Different copy protection schemes can cause problems. Troubleshooting is a pita but it must be done in a systematic way. Even then without the tools for it one may not always find the problem. Then a sure way to fix it is buy a solid known machine meant to run Sonar from Jim. I understand your frustration and would like nothing better then to fix it for you. I can't do that but with careful listing of things you have done to find what is the root cause of the problem and following any valid suggestions here it is likely we can help. We are here to help not argue about which DAW is more stable or concur with moving on to another. If you are looking for validation in looking elsewhere for your DAW this is not the place to get it. Its not unlike going into a Apple store and demanding a Dell. Until you are ready to do some intense troubleshooting there really is not much more to say.
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 26, 10 11:55 PM
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To confirm again: Win XP SP3 32bit, C2D 2.2Ghz. 2Gb RAM, M-Audio 2496 pci with latest drivers. A new PC or other upgrade (that will require spending) is out of the question.
When Sonar refuses to start, having been running 15 minutes earlier on a machine that was left on, what do I need to test? Where do I start?
I don't have the time to do intensive troubleshooting. I will uninstall Comodo though to rule that out.
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ba_midi
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 0:01 PM
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Goseba
To confirm again: Win XP SP3 32bit, C2D 2.2Ghz. 2Gb RAM, M-Audio 2496 pci with latest drivers. A new PC or other upgrade (that will require spending) is out of the question.
When Sonar refuses to start, having been running 15 minutes earlier on a machine that was left on, what do I need to test? Where do I start?
I don't have the time to do intensive troubleshooting. I will uninstall Comodo though to rule that out.
What exactly do you mean by "refuses to start"? What happens? Was it running and then just stopped running? Is there a little MIDI icon in your system tray (down by the clock area of the taskbar)? Do you get any error messages? You've given very little detail - and that makes it hard to help you debug it. It could be bad memory - or a bad device driver - or a problem motherboard - or a bad cable ... so many possiblities. And the only real way to debug it is with as much detailed information as you can possibly give.
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Shadow of The Wind
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 0:44 PM
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If the hardware is not the problem, then (still) my guess is that something else is correpted. Reinstalling Sonar won't help. Re-install Windows on another disk. Install all Windows updates. Install Sonar. Yes, this procedure is very time consuming - I know. Wilko
post edited by Shadow of The Wind - September 27, 10 0:45 PM
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 0:54 PM
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Goseba
No crash report this time, Sonar tries to start then fails. I can't remember exactly now what shows on the screen because I am not at that PC. I think it is the Windows box thet offers you to report the problem.
This time Sonar was working (I had had to reinstall 2 weeks ago), I exited for 15-20 minutes while I did something away from the PC, came back, started Sonar and it failed.
From a previous post. Unfortunately I cannot remember if the MIDI icon was showing. I don't know what other info I can give on this. Where can I find what info is needed?
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 1:05 AM
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Shadow of The Wind
If the hardware is not the problem, then (still) my guess is that something else is correpted. Reinstalling Sonar won't help. Re-install Windows on another disk. Install all Windows updates. Install Sonar.
Yes, this procedure is very time consuming - I know.
Wilko
Unfortunately I don't have a spare disc (or the cash for a spare).
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A1MixMan
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 1:10 AM
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You may want to do a full reinstall of Windows and then start with Sonar and nothing else.
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 1:44 AM
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A1MixMan
You may want to do a full reinstall of Windows and then start with Sonar and nothing else.
I am sorry but I am not prepared to do that, it would waste far too much of my (very limited music) time. Loading NI Komplete after would take many hours to reinstall, let alone all my other software. To have to do this would be one more reason to drop Sonar. To give more information though, if anyone can tell me specifics to check, then I will see what I can do.
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FastBikerBoy
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 2:14 AM
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There's been some good advice on here so far. Sonar may or may not be more finiky than other DAWs, I've only ever played with Cubase LE as an alternative and that was very briefly so can't comment.
One thing I do know though is that drivers etc will have a big influence on your success rate with Sonar. I used to use an Alesis Multimix FW12, when I first got it Sonar would crash quite regularly. After a lot of web searching, forum research (here and others), driver updating, trial and error I minimised the crashing to a point where if I knew exactly what actions would bring it down and simply avoided them. Eventually a semi decent set of Alesis drivers sorted it almost completely, but not quite.
I've upgraded now to an Allen & Heath ZED-R16 and Windows 7 x64, the only problem I've ever had with this set up was the odd lock up, that turned out to be my NIC card but I thought for a while that was a Sonar issue. Now with this current set-up Sonar has never crashed, some days I'm recording/mixing for 11 hours + at a time. This includes using V-Vocal on huge clips, never bouncing it etc. It's simply rock solid for me. (8.3.1)
I guess what I'm trying to say is that you either invest some time, finding and fixing the issue, be that hardware, drivers etc or you invest some money in different audio software and hope that fixes it. Either way there is an investment of some sort to be made. Sonar may be the problem with your set up I have no way of knowing, BUT it can be as solid as a rock, I know that because it is for me.
Good luck whatever you choose to do.
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lorneyb2
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 2:30 AM
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With your statement that reinstalling Sonar solves the problem for a while would seem to indicate that perhaps there is a hardware problem associated with either your hard drives or your RAM. Have you run check disk /f (chkdsk /f c:)? Have you run a Ram checker program?
With a bad sector on the hard drive a critical component may not be accessible or is corrupted when restarting the program.
(ran into that problem with a windows driver on my wifes comp that would intermittently become corrupt and would have to reinstall windows/or do windows repair. It would then work for a while and repeat. I eventually had to do a reformat of drive and reinstall everything. All has been well now for 3 months. )
Another thing to try would be to turn off any screen savers and make sure that your power settings are all set to always on with nothing being turned off(disks, monitor or standby). The coming back 15minutes later and it not restarting could indicate some service is being turned off or disconnected(eg keyboard controller/ sound card).
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benstat
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 4:58 AM
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Goseba
When Sonar refuses to start, having been running 15 minutes earlier on a machine that was left on, what do I need to test? Where do I start?
If you try to run Sonar and it refuses to start, it may be that the Sonar process is still running though not visible. This has happened to me a few times before. Have you tried opening Task Manager and looking in the list of processes? If you see SONARSTD.EXE (I use 8.5 Studio, maybe Sonar Producer is different, something like SONARPE.EXE perhaps?) then try killing the process. Make sure it has actually gone from the processes list, then try running Sonar again. This has worked for me on more than one occasion, and doesn't need a reboot. I'm actually with you on this. I'm a hobbyist too, with a young family. I get maybe 4 hours a week to mess around with music, and it bugs me when I lose time to crashes. I have so far got as far as downloading the Ableton demo, but it's not installed yet! I'll stick with Sonar for a while longer, mainly because I haven't got the cash to switch.
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 5:22 AM
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Thanks for the comments so far.
OK, deserting the family for a bit this evening.
Tried Sonar again - Splash screen comes up for a few seconds then I get a microsoft box saying SonarPE.exe (or similar) can not start. The midi activity icon opens and stays in the tray after. *What is the process for this?
I have now removed Comodo Security and just have Windows Firewall and Security Essentials.
I am running check disc now. I will investigate a RAM checker for when it has finished.
Can I install the original 8.5 and then jump straight to 8.5.3 without the other updates?
I will report back a little later.
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benstat
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 5:51 AM
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Just a thought - you don't have ASIO4All installed do you? It's an excellent program if you only have a cheap non-ASIO soundcard, but when I upgraded to a proper Cakewalk ASIO audio interface, I found that the drivers conflicted with it. I had to uninstall ASIO4All and my audio interface drivers, and then reinstall just my audio interface drivers to get it working properly again. Presumably your M-Audio has proper ASIO drivers, so if you do have ASIO4All installed then maybe it's worth uninstalling it?
Secondly, do you have audio configured as ASIO, rather than WDM mode, in Sonar? I find ASIO to be a lot more reliable than WDM since I switched over.
Thirdly, (I think) you haven't mentioned which VST plugins you use. As a heavy user of VST's myself, I find that it's those that crash Sonar more often than not. Are they all up to date? A dodgy VST could well crash Sonar on startup, seeing as Sonar scans for VSTs then.
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benstat
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 5:55 AM
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Goseba
Can I install the original 8.5 and then jump straight to 8.5.3 without the other updates? Looks like you need to install 8.5.2 first, according to the Sonar support page on the website. Oh, and if you can't start Sonar for whatever reason, don't be afraid to kill the Sonar process in Task Manager. It isn't going to do any harm, and you have nothing to lose because Sonar won't start anyway! If the process doesn't die, then it's a reboot I'm afraid.
post edited by benstat - September 27, 10 5:57 AM
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 5:59 AM
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I will check ASIO4all, it may be installed. I am using the M-Audio drivers though.
Do I need to install 8.5.1? I might just do them all anyway since I have found I have all the files from last time.
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Bristol_Jonesey
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 6:11 AM
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Have you deleted the necessary keys from your registry BEFORE re-installing Sonar?
I don't know what they are, but they've been posted on here many times in the past.
Without this necessary step, Sonar will probably never run properly for you until you delete them.
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Goseba
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 6:13 AM
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Keys deleted - I went through this with support in the past. Thanks anyway.
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Bristol_Jonesey
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Re:Sonar crashes yet again - Time to drop it
September 27, 10 6:17 AM
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Ah, well that rules one thing out.
Now you can concentrate on the other gazillion variables.
Just out of curiosity, what other software are you running on your pc, how much free disc space do you have?
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