Stuttering, dropouts, CPU spikes driving me crazy

I've been suffering with dropouts, CPU spikes, and audio skips/stutters on my projects.  I've tried increasing my buffer to 2048, I bypass all the FX bins in both tracks and busses and it still makes no difference.  The audio pops, drops out, sometimes when there's a dropout all 12 meters on the CPU meter all spike into the red momentarily.  Then it'll be fine for a random amount of time - like 10-15 seconds, then it happens again - a pop and a dropout, maybe a CPU spike.  This repeats through the whole playback. 

My original subscription ran out in August 2017 so that's the last time I updated and that version up to that point worked perfectly.  I don't know if it's something in Bandlab's version, or it could have happened in an update after August and before Bandlab got it that did this and I wouldn't have known because I didn't update until Bandlab released the current version.

Has anyone experienced anything like this?  None of my projects seem to be immune.  It's not a memory / computer problem because a lot of these projects I originally did in Sonar and there was no issues at all.  I also use Studio One and I've demoed Reaper and both of those have zero issues or hiccups no matter how heavy the project I've dumped into them so I know it's not a power / memory issue. 

Was there anything changed in preferences perhaps in one of the updates in how Sonar handles memory?  Maybe there's something I need to re-check again?  

Also, my hard drive is an SSD so it's not an issue there. 

Thanks

Always worth running latencymon or dpc latency checker to see if there are any devices holding up the cpu if this happens again.
 
I had a similar issue and found it was my usb wifi dongle...unplugged the dongle and the audio engine problems disappeared.
 
 

MS Windows (free version) also reloads Skype, Dropbox updates, etc on its own.  If I have a project running that's fairly heavy on resources, these will push it to create pops and stutters and even halt the audio engine.  Skype seems to be the worst about it.  I use Task Mgr to turn off all the unwanted apps before using Sonar each time.  It's a pain but it seems to help, and I haven't found another way to keep these from re-loading.  Unfortunately, Cortana re-loads immediately if you close it.

I think the advice to disable the network connection is probably the easiest path worth taking.  Most of the background stuff that might run by stealth will likely need the network to phone home, so if no network available, it will likely go back to sleep instead of checking for updates or whatever.
 
If it is desirable to leave the network connected during a session, then doing some digging with Sysinternals Process Explorer or Autoruns to learn more details about startup and scheduled tasks may be necessary.  Streamlining your active tasks and processes for audio is always a good idea!
 
Aggressive anti-malware apps can be dealt with if they allow scan exclusions for your audio paths and programs, and avoid scheduled scans during audio sessions (I disable scheduled scans).