Hi Kenny, I am probably going to give you a half-assed answer here, but there are several posts in this forum about laptops hopefully I can point you to.
 
I have not used Win8, but have seen enough posts that I will skip it as I did with Vista. The biggest issue with a laptop, is that it is "designed" to run off a battery, so often the O/S will determine "what" (not the user) needs to be "idled." X3 is not an issue (and I doubt your 2i4 is either). A few things to look for:
 
1) Always keep the laptop plugged in when using it as a DAW.
2) Change Power Management settings to NEVER idle a hard drive (or hibernate) while plugged in.
3) Disable Wi-Fi when using as a DAW (if feasible).
4) Research "core parking" and make sure that your laptop is not "idling" cores "not in use"... they should always be on. Bob Bone posted a nice post on this (is a registry change), but I cannot readily find it.
5) USB hubs/ports are not allowed to go idle (I also believe Bob posted on this).
 
My "hunch" is that Windows is trying to power manage things (assuming it is on a battery), and unless you change power management settings, I "believe" they are similar for plugged in and unplugged. Any of the above items does not "come back online" instantaneously.... so in a tracking mode it means "doom."
 
I actually fear using a laptop because of these, so cannot point you to direct experience. I apologize that I cannot give you a clear "answer," but hope it can give you some insight. When running as a DAW, any processes not needed should be manually shut down (CTRL-ALT-DEL). The latency monitor suggestion is good for this one.

OK - lots of things going on with your setup.
 
I believe some of this CAN be resolved, with a combination of you providing some information, and us working with that info and with you, to make some settings changes that should make things run better for you.
 
I HAVE to go run over to the local Social Security office to pick up some paperwork for my son, and so it will be 2-3 hours until I can devote some time to helping you.
 
That said - I WILL block out time this afternoon when I return, to work methodically through these issues.
 
Quickly though, before I go:
 
1.  When running ASIO, which is fine (usually the best choice), you do NOT want to have the Windows Default Audio Device to be set to your audio interface, since that WILL interfere with Sonar accessing it.  I will show you a couple of ways to take care of that and still have the ability to hear both Sonar sound and Windows sounds (media player, YouTube, etc).
 
2.  Your laptop is almost certainly going to have a wi-fi adapter, and these can wreak HAVOC with latency.  Many folks temporarily turn off or even disable their wi-fi adapters in Windows, just prior to launching a Sonar session, and then turn them back on or enable them again after finishing the Sonar session.  This is a FREQUENT occurrence when a wi-fi adapter is present.  Many laptops have either a function key or a little switch that will temporarily turn off the wi-fi adapter.
 
3.  Many audio interfaces do not behave well when plugged into a USB 3 port, so you want to make sure that either you are plugged into a USB 2 port, or that the interface is clearly designed to be able to be plugged into a USB 3 port.
 
4.  Sonar HATES it when a computer goes to sleep.  it loses connection with things like the audio interface, and it generally can wig out, so you need to change settings on the laptop to be like Max Power, all the time, no sleeping on the job, and all of that.  I set up a few shortcuts on my laptop's desktop screen, to allow me to manually put the computer into sleep more or locked mode, etc., and would manually do that only after exiting out of a given Sonar session.
 
5.  We will need to look at your current reported latency values in Sonar, and likely will need to change those to get a decent latency for Sonar when recording.  When mixing, the ASIO Buffer Size can be jacked way up - like to 1024, but for recording it needs to be much lower.
 
Anyways, I have to go, but again I DO believe we can get you squared away so please do not yet kick the dog, or bury the wife in the back yard, out of frustration.
 
If others have not gotten you up and running smoothly prior to my return, I PROMISE you I will spend some more time trying to help.
 
It is now a bit after noon, I should be back by around 3 PM or at the latest 4 PM.
 
Bob Bone
 

EDIT: I was typing too slow (as usual, see my nick)
 

kennywtelejazz
Last year I picked up a brand new  lap top , Win 8 64bit OS ( lower middle of the road spec $500 range )  
Yeah , I know C….be grateful you don't have to go there ever again …but I do  it's the best I can do for now ... 

That should be fine till you see your processor consumption is hi (too many synths, effects and so on).

For a sound card I went with a Focusrite 2i4 since a few folks here recommended it and it fell into a price range I could swing ...

This one works with whatever you attached to it, at least from compatibility point of view.
 

using the beta driver in  ASIO the latency is still higher that what I find acceptable or useable 

May be it is better to specify concrete numbers you get, different people have different "acceptance".
 

is it typical for a usb sound card to stop working all together and require a computer restart once you close the lid on your laptop?
...
I have also noticed that if the cable from the usb port got moved slightly in a gentle fashion w out any signifacant pressure on the hub the sound card would also require a restart of the computer...

Already suggested switching off all power saving featured (in BIOS and OS, including dynamic CPU frequency) is very good idea (you can try to switch in back one by one once everything is working fine).
 
Try to avoid USB hub between the interface and the computer. While USB is designed with predictable latency/throughput in mind, real implementations (in comp., in the interface and in the hub) are usually bad.
 
USB devices have longer "route" when your computer comes back after sleep. It is better to stop SONAR and wait a bit till ASIO is also unloaded before pushing the sleep button. In all cases, reconnecting 2i4 should return it to the working state (again, with ASIO unloaded first). Otherwise you can try to play with "USB power during sleep" settings (if your laptop has some).
 

 …I loop the section I want to comp over and after 5 loops my Audio engine in X3 dies on me and everything stops is 6 gigs of ram just too light ? could it be something else ? my buffers were set to 512 / ASIO.

512 is in fact conservative. Even for very bad system. But...
After a while when you do not touch keyboard/mouse, Windows think you are not working. It can start power saving and/or service tasks. It is normally good to switch network during sessions and periodically leave Windows running with network connected. Fighting and killing all background activity is hard.
Also check with "HD Tune" (free version is ok) that your disk has no significant "drops" in performance.
 

normally I do the whole run as administrator for the app and open what I want to work on once the program opens ..
today I saw the rendered mix in the explorer list and decided to double tap the file to open it up ...
the next thing that happened really pissed me off ….

Running with explorer opens SONAR with user privileges. Many plug-ins detect that and ask for registration. Running once under Admin and once under User normally solves that problem (till your system get significant Windows update... like Windows 8.1).

robert_e_bone

1.  When running ASIO, which is fine (usually the best choice), you do NOT want to have the Windows Default Audio Device to be set to your audio interface, since that WILL interfere with Sonar accessing it.
 

Can't say I've ever found that to be a problem in the nearly 20 years I've been using Windows DAWs. I do have the Windows sound scheme set to "no sounds" though. A constantly beeping, boinging and chirping computer drives me up the wall.

Other than that I agree with you.

Kenny, I'm using Win8 (not 8.1 yet as I'm waiting on a couple of driver updates) and have no problems with it. If anything it's an improvement on 7.

It sounds like you have several different things going on here.

First, switch off the wi-fi in control panel/device manager. Wired networking seems to generally cause few issues if any, wireless networking nothing but problems. It might be an idea to switch it off in the BIOS if you don't need it. Bluetooth seems less of a problem, but unless needed while working in Sonar it might be a good idea to disable that as well. Also any webcams or other not-needed hardware.

The laptop's power saving features will, by default, try to maximise battery life by putting stuff to sleep. You don't want that in a DAW. Choose the power scheme with minimum power saving, then go through it and make sure minimum and maximum cpu are set to 100%, hard drives never sleep and USB ports are never suspended. You may need to duplicate this for "plugged in" and "battery" schemes as Windows often still sees a laptop (or a desktop connected to a UPS) as running on battery when plugged in. I think there are also settings in device manager concerned with suspending USB. If you right click on the USB ports in device manager they can be found on the properties page.

Switch off core parking (google will find what you need to do).

Get rid of the USB hub and connect the interface directly to the USB2 port. If you need more USB inputs put the hub on the USB3 port. It's a bad idea to share the interface with other devices off a hub because their needs are likely to conflict. Many interfaces don't like being connected to a hub at all and there seem to be hardly any that will work properly attached to USB3, at least, hardly any whose manufacturer will assure you they will work. Which has become a problem given that most medium/high end laptops (or any Apple computer) no longer have USB3.

Hard drive speed may or may not be an issue. It really depends on how much audio data is being read/written to the HDD and what other applications might be trying to access it at the same time. Windows will be using it for the swap file at least. You may well find a 7,200rpm USB3 (or even USB2) external disc used for audio data only will help. Do not connect it to the same laptop port as the audio interface though.

Sharing a USB port via a hub is often OK for MIDI data (MIDI doesn't use many bits) and I've got away with an external drive and MIDI controller connected to the same hub in the past.

Finally, what's the cpu in the laptop?

Whoa, Kenny.
 
The work you put into your post is appreciated, but it is a lot to chew on. Might have better luck breaking it down into multiple threads.
 
The USB problem is probably Windows related and is common enough to have prompted the following from Microsoft:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953367
 
Unacceptable latency with your audio interface is probably not related to the interface per se, almost any reasonable quality USB device can get to something you can live with. I assume you mean that you are unable to set the audio buffer low enough without experiencing dropouts. With an off-the shelf laptop, a DPC latency issue is usually to blame. Most common is to have drivers for the wireless adapter or video display hogging resources. It is usually easy to disable the networking in BIOS, but often not possible to re-set priority on the video.
 
Did I miss the brand and model number of the computer?

+2 on NOT using a hub (even a powered one) with an audio interface. Use the hub for everything else. FWIW I've had no problems (so far) with USB 2 devices connected to a USB 3 port. In fact one interface which was flaky with USB 2 said never to use it with USB 3. But I tried it anyway and it actually worked perfectly with USB 3 where it hadn't with USB 2.
 
One more thing - you should not have to restart your computer if the USB interface goes away. Unplug it, wait a few seconds, and plug back in. Sonar will say the device is disconnected and ask if you want to reconnect it.
 
Robert is totally right about laptops not defaulting to music. In fact they default to the worst possible environment for music. This article has some useful tips. This one is similar but a little shorter. 
 
It's really too bad that you have to jump through all these hoops with Windows and external hardware just to be able to run a program on it. The one consolation I can provide is that once you get things working, they tend to stay working. It's a beautiful thing when you don't have to think about this crap and just make music. and you will get there eventually...
 

Although Cakewalk hates it when I say this, if all else fails, Sonar runs very well under Boot Camp   Cakewalk doesn't support this because they don't have the resources to help people troubleshoot problems with Mac desktops running DAW software but Sonar even works under Parallels.

Brando
Have you checked your dpc latency? Laptops have a lot of power saving features that need to be shut off. Sounds like  among these, your usb ports are suspending/sleeping.

Hi Brando , I need to look into that and thank you form the link you posted in your later post 
 

hockeyjx
This may help a little:  http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/pc-optimization-guide-for-windows-8/
 
I am in IT and dislike Win8. Most businesses will not upgrade because of the lost productivity learning Win8 causes. My Dell business rep has sold a whopping 3 laptops with Win8 since it's introduction.
 

Hello hockeyjx , some of the basic things in that link I have done …all the things I could change easily  , power consumption, no sleep unless I put it to sleep ..no screen saver …and a number of small things …no wifi ..
I haven't tried driver changes or any of the hard core stuff that I will have to tread lightly with …I am willing to go there …thank you for your help ..
 
Sidroe , wow  man …I need to study your post so i can  come back here once I've had the time digest and understand fully the points you have brought up from your experiences …plus , I need to respond to you proper 
thank you for taking the time …...I will be back 
 

Sanderxpander
I think it is generally not recommended to run your audio interfaces through a hub. You may get slightly better results connecting directly. That said, it doesn't seem like this audio interface is the one for you. Do you have access to another one you could borrow to see if you have better luck?

Hi Sanderxpander , 
Yikes , with my current machine only having 2 usb ports , and my only real option is having to use my one and only usb 2 hub to go direct using the 2i4 ….
I'm gonna have to go with door number two and say that would inhale exactly like a high powered electric machine generating  super intake pressure …
I just can't seem to bring my self to say the S word in this highly esteemed public music forum  
 
Well OK , I do like the 2i4's mic pree's …decent headroom and they add a nice color to my guitar when I go direct 
also , it's built nice and I do need an interface with midi for my windows machine …
 
I do have another usb audio interface that I use for my I Mac …it's a Yamaha Audiogram 6 ..
it seems a little low end feature wise compared to the 2i4 ..16 bit only ….and it has no midi ...
works fantastic w the I Mac …runs all day and night w out a hiccup set to 128 in my apps 
I use an app called Midi Guitar to compensate for the lack of midi ...
thats the only other sound card  that I have that is usb …
I could swap it out for comparisons sake ..other than that I would have to go out and get something else ..
thank you for trying to help me 
 
Kenny

kennywtelejazz
Yikes , with my current machine only having 2 usb ports , and my only real option is having to use my one and only usb 2 hub to go direct using the 2i4 ….

 
Try the 2i4 with the USB 3 port. It may work, and if it does...it does. If it doesn't, no kittens will have been harmed during the testing process.

IIRC, some computers have BIOS settings to switch USB3 ports to USB2 ports others can control the ports via driver software.