soundman32
Although I understand why people still say "run as administrator", on a modern program (which I believe X3 is), there should be NO reason for the user to need to be administrator.  If there is a reason, then Sonar should hang it's head in shame.  
 
I've been a professional programmer on Windows for the last 20 odd years, and it is professional pride that made sure I followed all the advice that MS gave about coding for normal users.  There is no excuse for it these days, except for sloppy programmers.

I believe part of the reason to Run as Administrator has to do with certain plug ins, particularly legacy ones, rather than Sonar itself.

X3 by itself does not need to run as administrator, it may be necessary for some older plug-ins. And it may also be necessary for BitBridge to be configured to run as administrator too (although not in this case as 32bit X3 does not use BitBridge). As a professional programmer any help or suggestions on how to get these old dlls to work without elevated privileges or registry hacks would be greatly appreciated.
 
As best I can tell the stability issues are not with new projects but running pre-X series projects in X3. Even taking 64bit out of the loop by running the 32bit X3 host, there have been considerable changes to SONAR and the underlying libraries that may have issues with old plug-ins. In general SONAR is backward compatible but there are exceptions.

I concur on older plugins being the chief reason for running Sonar as administrator.
 
I do it just to make sure I give Sonar the best chance of running without issues - whatever the potential cause.  It is simply one extra click or hitting Enter to convince Windows to let Sonar run, so I really don't give two hoots that I have to do that.
 
I also always run the installs with Run As Administrator.
 
Bob Bone
 

markyzno

gmp

robert_e_bone
Running programs while logged on to your computer as a user that happens to be an administrator is NOT, repeat NOT, the same as running a program using the explicit Run As Administrator option.
 
The above is an important distinction.
 
Even users that are Administrators get a restricted set of 'execution token privileges.  Setting the EXPLICIT option for a program to launch with Run As Administrator grants an elevated set of execution privileges.
 
Soooooo, again, I ask you to try launching Sonar with the explicit setting of Run As Administrator, and see if that helps.  To do so, right-click on the launch icon for Sonar, then click on Run As Administrator.
 
Bob Bone
 

 
Thanks Bob, this was all new to me. I see that right click option and will try it. So is it possible that I may have to always run X3 as the administrator? Do you use this option at times? I wonder if I can modify my shortcut to X3 so that I don't have to always right click it? You mentioned installing X3 as the administrator. Is there a trick to that also?
 
Sorry for all the questions, you've really gotten my curiosity up about this.

Right click on the Sonar.exe icon, goto properties, goto the compatibility tab, then at the botton check the Run this program as admin check box. This will make it ALWAYS run in explicit admin mode.
 
Btw, I agree with Alex, Start using 64bit Sonar on a 64bit OS. It can remove alot of gremlins.

I do plan on doing that, maybe sooner than I anticipated, since several of you have mentioned it. There has been such transition going from 8.5 to X3 that I'm trying keep as simple as I can at first, yet if the crashes continue even running as administrator, I'll install the 64 bit X3 and see what that does.

robert_e_bone
I concur on older plugins being the chief reason for running Sonar as administrator.
 
I do it just to make sure I give Sonar the best chance of running without issues - whatever the potential cause.  It is simply one extra click or hitting Enter to convince Windows to let Sonar run, so I really don't give two hoots that I have to do that.
 
I also always run the installs with Run As Administrator.
 
Bob Bone
 

I agree totally, especially since you've explained how easy it is to always run as administrator. Why not? I have a pretty complicated setup with lots of variables, so I'd rather play it as safe as possible.

Cakewalk's greatest number of customer service issues relate to third-party plug-ins.

@GMP - if you still have issues, then I think some closer examination of your download/installation/system is in order.
 
It might be something like Windows maintenance not being up to data prior to doing the Sonar X3 install.  Perhaps antivirus software was running during download and/or install and interfered with things.  Possibly want to try a complete removal of the current install of X3 and do it again with Run As Administrator.  Do these issues occur with all projects in X3, opening of older projects in X3, with particular plugins present, or perhaps with no plugins present?
 
Do the original download files have hash values that match the published hash values from the Sonar install page from the web site?
 
Lots of stuff to look at.  The fact that not so many folks report these kinds of issues suggests it is something unique to your system, or download, or install, or 3rd-party plugins.
 
Bob Bone
 

Today I ran X3 32 bit as the administrator. THings went fine for a few hours then late in the day, I had a project up that was using a lot of memory with softsynths. I did a windows search on my many FX folders for some FX. I found 15 mp3s that I tried to drag in to X3. As soon as I tried, it crashed.
 
I reopened X3 and this time, I was listening to the FX using Windows Media Player, while the song was loading. It crashed again. So I stopped using Windows Media Player and reopened X3. THis time I only dragged 2 mp3s into X3, one at a time to be safe.  It was ok for the next hour.
 
X3 is clearly far more finicky about me multitasking than 8.5 is. The littlest thing crashes it. I'm positive I could have done the same thing with 8.5 and it wouldn't have crashed.
 
Any suggestions on how to track this problem down?
 
 

My guess is you have Sonar and Windows Media Player both using ASIO drivers.
 
Try disabling all Windows sounds, and also try setting your Windows default audio device to use the on-board sound, rather than your audio interface.
 
Bob Bone
 

robert_e_bone
My guess is you have Sonar and Windows Media Player both using ASIO drivers.
 
Try disabling all Windows sounds, and also try setting your Windows default audio device to use the on-board sound, rather than your audio interface.
 
Bob Bone
 

 
you're correct Sonar and Windows Media Player both using ASIO drivers.  That was what most people were advising years ago in XP. So that's not a good idea anymore?
 
I haven't checked control panel / sounds in a while. Under playback I was surprised to see only 1 item listed "Remote audio default device". It used to have my 2 Layla 24 PCI cards listed there and I could choose either one as the default playback device. I have 2 Layla 24 cards synced together using wordclock.
 
When I did all these Windows updates, I also ran the Intel driver utility like Cakewalk suggested. It showed I needed to update a few motherboard items. One of which was the onboard sound card.
 
I went ahead and updated it also, but i have it disabled in the bios. That was the advice people in this forum were giving years ago, maybe that's not the case anymore, since you suggested I use that onboard audio for Windows Media Player. I wonder if updating that driver is what changed control panel / sounds to "Remote audio default device" instead of my 2 Layla cards.
 
Under Sounds tab is Sound Scheme - no sounds. I know in XP when I opened my FX folder it would use "search companion" to do the searches and even though I had "no sounds" selected in control panel, I would still get this funny little sound in the search companion. I'm fairly new to Win 7, so I don't remember if that funny little sound is going on, if so maybe that had something to do with the crash today.
 
I'll go ahead and enable my onboard sound in the bios. I may reinstall my Layla 24 driver and see if the onboard sounds and Laylas all show up under control panel - sounds.
 
Thanks for the advice,