robert_e_bone
Yes - and I apologized earlier for that.  
 
The other questions were valid.
 
If you have an audio interface that uses a USB connection to the computer, is it possible you have it plugged into a USB 3.0 port?  This can cause instant crashes and other flaky behavior.  My Presonus audio interfaces wants to be plugged into only USB 2 ports. 

 
As I said in my OP, "I have no special hardware attached to my PC right now -  just a mouse and a keyboard.   "
 
There's no special sound card with this PC, just the integrated audio.  I have several other software tools that manipulate audio -  Audacity, MP3DirectCut, and a few video editors - and they have no problems.    I expect an application to trap exceptions in things like drivers.   For example, Adobe Creative Suite doesn't like something about my video card driver, but it doesn't crash; it just puts up a box telling me that various features will be unavailable.
 
I know I sound like a broken record, but how does X3 do its exception-handling and does it maintain a log file someplace I can interrogate?    In 2014 it's almost unheard-of for a modern piece of software to crash without a trace of what happened.   I think Sonar X3 is the software equivalent of MH370.   I just want a ping.
 

We don't know how sonar does error handling and it doesn't save a log

What sound card/audio device are you using?

lawp
We don't know how sonar does error handling and it doesn't save a log

What sound card/audio device are you using?

As I said above, it's just whatever integrated audio comes with the Thinkstation E31.    The technical specifications for the E31 workstation just say:  "High Definition (HD) Audio, Realtek® ALC662 codec"
 
But why does it matter?   It's just for output to speakers.  I've got dozens of things on this PC that output to speakers with no problems - other audio editors, video editors,  audio and video players, streaming music and streaming video players, browsers, etc.
 
Also during installation X3 did some kind of check of internal system timing which appeared to involve audio resources and pronounced everything just fine.
 
The only purpose of the soundcard should be to play music I'm editing to speakers so I can hear the results of what I'm doing.   I won't be using the soundcard for anything else.  My PC is on my network and I have lots of files on my network from audio-recorders, video-cameras, MIDI sources, etc, and those will be the raw material for what I'm editing. 
 
How do I get actual Cakewalk tech support for this?      Do I have to buy the product?  (this is the trial version).   Can I get my money back if they can't solve it?
 

I did recall after I posted that you had indicated nothing special hooked up - I had to run out the door to get to my son, who was having an asthma episode, and didn't have time to edit my post.
 
1.  You don't yet have enough posts (need 25) to be able to send/receive Private Messages in the forum, so I will send a private message to a couple of the Cakewalk folks, on your behalf, in case they are poking around over the weekend.
 
2.  Come Monday, if you have not gotten past this issue, then by all means try to contact Cakewalk Technical Support - I suggest doing it via a phone call.  They are open from I believe 1:00-6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.
 
3.  The reason knowing what you are using for your audio device when running Sonar is that some folks who do not have dedicated audio interfaces use software such as ASIO4ALL, which is a 'wrapper' program that fools applications into thinking they are working with ASIO when really under the hood it is a WDM driver masquerading as ASIO.  And, there are all kinds of flaky errors that can pop up when it is installed on a system - sometimes when not even being intended to be used - just present on a system.  Most folks recommend that you steer clear of it - though for some percentage of folks, it works better than WDM.
 
Bob Bone
 

Just a follow up - I sent a private message per my post above - to Ryan Munnis of Cakewalk, and hopefully he forgets to enjoy the beautiful weekend and logs on to the forum over the weekend to help you.
 
Bob Bone

robert_e_bone
Just a follow up - I sent a private message per my post above - to Ryan Munnis of Cakewalk, and hopefully he forgets to enjoy the beautiful weekend and logs on to the forum over the weekend to help you.
 
Bob Bone

 
Thanks!!
 

I thought I'd start from scratch incase anything that got downloaded from Cakewalk was corrupted in the download.   But I don't see a way to UNinstall the existing crashing app. 
 
Originally it did the whole install procedure including creating a desktop icon and putting the files in C:\Program Files (x86)\Cakewalk\SONAR X3 Producer Trial (I asked it for the 32 bit version) and filling up the registry with Cakewalk stuff.    But it's not listed as an installed program in Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Programs and Features .   Why?    
 
So how do I get rid of it?
 
 

I have never seen that behavior before, that I can recall.
 
I wonder if it never completed the portion of the install when it updates the portion of the registry that tells Windows it is a registered program.
 
I do not happen to have any 32-bit Sonar installed, so I would not want to guess at locations, but if you don't mind waiting for a little bit, I will install 32-bit X3 and then post back with the location of all the places you would need to delete things to remove your X3 installation.
 
I will go ahead and begin now, so it should not be too long.
 
Also, if you have not heard back from Ryan by the end of the evening, please let me know and I will also send a PM to Noel, in case he get on tomorrow.
 
So - I should post back in about 30 minutes, give or take some fresh coffee.  :)
 
Bob Bone
 

I re-downloaded the app and did a total reinstall.    Everything appeared to happen just the way it did the first time.   It asked me to make some selections and check off that I read the rules, etc, etc, and then it said it needed to reboot my computer.
 
It asked if it could shut down any running programs in order to reboot.   Of course the installer was the only running program because earlier it had suggested shutting down all the other programs.   And since the installer was the thing doing the asking I assumed it knew what it was doing.    The installer was the only running program and it was asking if it was OK to shut down any running programs so surely it must have determined that it was safe to shut it down.
 
But this time I decided to assume the X3 installer had no idea what it was doing!   So I said no, don't shut down and reboot.    Sure enough, the installer had more to do and after a moment it put up a message saying it was unable to register APRO.DLL and did I want to try again or ignore?   I told it to try again and then it was happy.  And now the app comes up just fine.
 
So the problem was that the installer wanted to reboot the PC before it was done doing the install!!  
 
I've written quite a few Windows installers myself and I can't imagine how they did this unless their install code is running in separate threads, or even whole separate processes that don't talk to each other.   I'd get fired if I wrote an installer that told the user to reboot while it was still in the middle of registering DLL's.
 
 
 

Did you happen to run the install with the EXPLICIT Run As Administrator option?
 
I have seen the failure to register issue for various dll's, and it seems like it doesn't happen when Run As Administrator is chosen.
 
The other thing is to make sure Windows is up to current maintenance levels prior to Sonar install.
 
Other than that, I dunno.
 
Bob Bone