It's a Mushkin Joule 800w

It is possible that your motherboard is faulty. You have tried everything that would relate to the graphics card and the mouse. In the past we had a lot of conflicts with mice and graphics cards using the same IRQ but what you have described seems like a fault in the motherboard. 
 
 
 
 

Has anyone asked you to verify that your wifi card is disabled?
 
I'm looking for some kinda thing that uses electricity in bursts.

Hi Spencer,
 
I can sympathize with you, I experienced the 'zipper' type sound when moving faders around in Sonar a few years back. Like you, I tried everything. I disabled everything I could think of, tried a new video card, onboard graphics, no mouse, driver updates, tweaks here and there etc etc etc etc, everything you have just been through - days of fiddling around. I wish I could say I had the answer because, like you, I found nothing that could stop it. Having said that, I had no other pops or clicks other than that, everything ran fine. About 18 mths ago I built a new DAW and upgraded my sound card to an RME Babyface. Since then all has been perfect with Sonar.
 
There must have been something specific in my old setup that caused the issue but I'll never know what it was!  
 
  

gswitz
Has anyone asked you to verify that your wifi card is disabled?
I'm looking for some kinda thing that uses electricity in bursts.

I don't have one, I got an RJ45 cable to the router. Its driver wasn't installed on my test windows boot, so it can't be that.
 
@Millzy, when you say you built a new DAW, you mean it's on a new motherboard right? Was the problematic one an ASUS by any chance?

Have you gone through the process of seeing what might either BE running while Sonar is running, or might get STARTED as a scheduled task when Sonar is running?
 
I have had scheduled tasks whack things out before, and it took me a LONG while to think of looking for something there as a possible culprit.
 
If not a scheduled task that kicks off, perhaps something else that is a background service might be doing things that interfere with Sonar's operation.
 
I sure wish I could be more help to you, I sometimes feel like a newb with so many different areas of both Sonar and with computers, despite decades with both.
 
Bob Bone
 

Are you adjusting the faders with a controller or a mouse?

Both mouse and midi do the same problem, it's the software fader itself.
 
There couldn't possibly have been any problematic background processes running when I installed a bare-bones Windows test boot. Also the problem is 100% occurrence rate.

I figured that - I was grasping.  I just have no idea what is causing this on your system - sorry.
 
Bob Bone
 

Hi Spencer,
 
My old board was an Asus and so is this one (P8Z77-V-LK). I run an i7 3770K with 16gig of ram, using onboard graphics, and my Babyface. It is a DAW only, and I only run Sonar. All runs perfectly. I feel your frustration, like I said I wasted days trying to problem solve. Good luck!