boy, this daw can get away from you if you're not careful

Good morning my fellow Cakewalkers.

It doesn't take much monkeying around with platinum to learn you've put too much icing on the cake.

Being the newbie on the block, once I learn something, I quickly overdo it, as I'm sure most newbies find themselves doing. And I know absolutely, that I haven't even scratched the surface.
I've only 'la-de-da'd' a few vocals, trying out my various mics on track lanes trying to pick one that best suits my voice.
Rode 'the Classic'
Akg 414
shire sm 81
Foster m77rp ribbon.

Surprisingly, I found the Shire to sound best.

So anyway, whilst I was doing that, I was fooling around with the pro channel.
Moving every dial and frequency every which way.

So now I want to get back to 'zero' with the prochannel. I can't locate any sort of reset. That which would return the eq curve and frequency positions back to where they started. I moved all the gains and all that, but can't figure out the eq. You'd think there's be a simple 'reset' for the entire module. I went into preferences, all the way to resetting the entire audio engine and whatever else was at that prompt.
I searched here for it and couldn't find an answer.

One other issue.
On my Roland VS recorders there's an option to delete everything but what you're working on NOW. It's like...so the project doesn't have to remember all the previous edits, takes etc. I deleted the history but that only deleted the deletes I'd done during the project.
Let's say you mixed you're entire song down to the two final tracks and now you want to delete all the previous takes and edits, to claim back hard drive space and possibly smoothness of speed within the track.
The reason I want to do this is, the first song I did, I recorded many takes on top of themselves (just the mic with a musical track on a separate pair of tracks...kinda like karaoke. But not! Hey, I was only testing the system, ok...
So I layered maybe 10 vocals on top of each other, I also did some multiple layering on adjacent tracks for harmonies...THEN I learned about take lanes. So I did a bunch of those.
So I have way too many too manys. I know I can delete them, but doing so I'm guessing, doesn't really rid the project of them, does it.
I know I could delete the project and start over but I won't learn anything by doing that.
See, after I had done so much of this layering, track moving etc., I noticed the time line lagging. I also noticed the system meter... (I have 8 threads), and the 1st of 8 vertical lines was sometimes pegging. None of the others were. They were behaving nicely. And when the time line passed the end of the song, everything went back to normal. I jump back to the beginning...the lag again.
So I deleted all but one vocal and the backing track, and deleted the history of deletes and track moves. The lagging was still there. If I switched projects to one which have a dozen unmoved unedited tracks, the time line and movement run smooth.
So I know that the project hold onto this 'bloat' history somewhere...but where?

Peace and good day
Jon

Right. That 'clean audio' must be what I'm looking for. The project is a throwaway. But I felt there was something to learn here, which there was. And saving a zeroed out prochannel sounds good as well. I've no idea where the little pointers in the eq go, but stupid me, it wouldn't take much to copy them off another unused prochannel.
As always, thanks for your help.
My only concern now is, why was the weight of all that I was doing only affect the 1st thread of my processor?

For cleaning up projects, you should look into Cakewalk Audio Finder Tool (also under Utilities) which can 'clean' all audio folders in one go, and gives you more information and options for what to do with 'orphaned' files. Here's a sort of 'primer' on using CWAF:
 
     http://forum.cakewalk.com/FindPost/3259881
 
Also, a quickie way to clean a single project is to save it to a new folder with 'Copy all audio...' checked; only files that are still referenced by clips in the project will be copied to the new folder. But deleting unused clips  (i.e. muted clips/lanes/tracks and Archived tracks) from the project in the first place is up to you. And it's always a good idea to save a project with a new name (can be in the same folder as earlier versions) after major changes/deletions so that you can easily revert to an earlier version that has everything intact in case you inadvertently whack something that wasn't intended.
 
In addition to loading a default preset for the Prochannel to reinitialize EQ settings, you can generally double-click any control to return if to its default position.  You'll also want to look into using Mix Recall to save intermediate/alternate mixes. As you discovered, the Undo history generally only tracks edits to content, and not mix/routing changes.
 
EDIT: The high load on the first core is probably due to individual plugin threads that can't easily be load-balanced across cores. You can try enabling Plugin Load Balancing in Preferences > Audio > Playback and Recording. It will help the overall load balancing of some projects and hurt or have no effect on others, depending on the content. And it's only effective if your audio buffer is 128 samples IIRC, which it generally should be if you're past the tracking phase of a project and on to mixing/mastering.

HARDDRlVER
Right. That 'clean audio' must be what I'm looking for. The project is a throwaway. But I felt there was something to learn here, which there was. And saving a zeroed out prochannel sounds good as well. I've no idea where the little pointers in the eq go, but stupid me, it wouldn't take much to copy them off another unused prochannel.

 
The ProChannel presets are here: C:\Cakewalk Content\SONAR Platinum\ProChannel Presets
 
The one called "Misc - Full Reset.pcp" will do what you want.
 
As to getting rid of the files you no longer need, I typically "Save As" to a different folder but there are other options. I wrote about these in "The Big Book of SONAR Tips," which is available from the Cakewalk store. Here's the relevant section:
 
Suppose you’ve been working on a song for quite a while...adding tracks, removing tracks, bouncing and editing, rendering virtual instruments, maybe even bringing in some loops from an external drive. Because SONAR doesn’t know if you might want to use some of those removed tracks later on, when you save a project to a Per-Project folder, SONAR saves everything you’ve created in the project, including bounces. This primary method of saving projects is how you can end up with project folders that take up Gigabytes. (And if you’re not saving to a Per-Project folder, stop what you’re doing, boot SONAR, open SONAR’s Help, and read up on Per-Project Folders. You’ll thank me.)
 
However, SONAR provides a second way to save projects that can reduce the file size dramatically. Choose File > Save As, and check “Create One File Per Clip” as well as “Copy All Audio with Project.” Projects saved this way will also open much faster.
 
This will save only the audio that’s represented in Clips. For example, if a 10-second Clip “points” to a 2-minute WAV file, only the 10 seconds of audio in the clip will be saved; the rest of the file won’t be saved. This is like putting your project on a crash diet, and Gigabytes can turn into Megabytes (or at least, tens or hundreds of Megabytes). The downside is that if you want to return to any of the original audio back (“Y’know, I think the second verse in an earlier take that I removed from the project was better”), it’s not going to be there.
 
But there’s a third way to save files that splits the difference between the two approaches in terms of size. It’s also excellent for backing up projects.
 
First, you need to have saved the project using a Per-Project folder. Then, choose Utilities > Consolidate Project Audio. The original intention of this function was to gather together all files used in a project, including those referenced on other media (e.g., CD-ROMs). But SONAR has saved files you bring in from other media for quite some time, and tucked them in the Audio folder in your Per-Project folder.
 
What remains relevant about Consolidate Project Audio is that is saves the entire file referenced by Clips into a sub-folder within the Per-Project’s folder Audio folder, and is automatically named with the project name and “backup.”
 
For example, if you’ve removed all Clips that reference a file, that file will not be saved. But if any Clip references a file, unlike the “Create One File Per Clip” option the entire file will be saved into the sub-folder, not just the portion referenced by the Clip.
 
Note that the .cwp file will not be saved into this sub-folder. But if you Save As into the sub-folder and don’t check “Copy All Audio with Project,” you can save the .cwp file in with the audio. Back up this folder, and now you’ve backed up the project—move it to your storage media of choice, and you can rest a little easier that your project is safe from something like a hard drive crash. Of if you’re running out of space where you store your songs, delete the files in the Per-Project Audio folder, and replace them with the audio from the sub-folder (which should take up less space).
 

If your computer has multiple processors, you should consider setting the default thread scheduling model to take advantage of that. If my memory serves, it defaults to 1, a legacy setting; setting it to 2 will leverage a more advanced threading mechanism which should result in a more efficient use of your processors and better overall performance.
 
You can access that setting by selected Edit->Preferences, then choosing "Configuration File". The thread scheduling model setting is near the bottom of the dialog box. Change it from 1 to 2, then hit okay and you should see nice little improvement in the feel of the application.