OK, I think all my frequent crashing may have to do with Auto-Tune 5 instead of X3e. Well, it's worth a look. So I opened up Melodyne and a YouTube video on how to use it called "Sonar X3 and Melodyne Essential" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgn6W_lodkM.
 
Right away I see that there are things in the video that I don't have in my version. I have no toolbar with a hand and zoom button, no buttons in the upper right that say Correct Pitch and Quantize Time, and I can't drag blobs around or lasso them or basically do much of anything that is in the video. I'm running X3e Studio 64-bit and I've never opened Melodyne until today. 
 
So what's up?

Are you opening Melodyne stand alone version, or are you selecting a clip, then Region FX - - Melodyne within Sonar ?

I was doing REgion FX within Sonar. Anyway, I found the answer, so if anyone else runs into this. You have to go through the registration process for Melodyne when you install Sonar. Problem with this approach, Cakewalk, is that when we are installing Sonar, it is very likely we don't know what "Melodyne" is, so when some foreign registration page comes up, we close it. Then, much later, we open Melodyne within Sonar and it seems to work - sort of. Bad user experience. 
 
Anyway, problem solved.

 . . . aha, Melodyne registration when first installing Sonar, that was my next question, good to hear you got it solved.