I have a rack mount PC DAW that is reasonably well equipped. Quad-Core Q6600, 8GB RAM, 3 HD's (1 - System and Sonar( 7200 RPM), 1- Audio (7200 RPM), 1- Samples (7200 RPM). Lots of VSTI's. I'm use the Roland OctoCapture soundcard and run Sonar X3 (rev c I believe at the moment). Windows 7 64 bit. Recently I started noticing it taking progressively longer to boot up (was usually very fast) and sample load times slowed to a crawl. Used to be reasonably fast. I imaged the main system drive to a replacement SSD but that seemed to have no impact. I rarely connect it to the Internet and only for music app updates (Kontakt, Sonar, etc)

I was hoping replacing the system drive would fix things but it did not. I ran chkdsk on the samples drive and no errors were reported.

Any thoughts on where to look for the problem?

All thoughts/ideas are welcomed and appreciated.

Lots of temp files to delete?  Defrag?
 
What sorts of things are loaded onto the primary drive?
 
Bob Bone
 

Picture cache been cleared out recently?
Download memtest & test your RAM.

Have you checked the windows event viewer recently?
 
I appreciate you may avoid this thinking that updating system software causes instability issues, however as we see time and again in these forums, the reverse is most often the case. If you are worried about something catastrophic happening afterwards (extremely unlikely) you can always backup your partitions to an external hard drive with something like Acronis TrueImage so you can roll back if necessary.
 
So I strongly suggest you need to bring your Windows maintenance update to date.
 
Please run windows update several times, include most of the optional updates as well, and when was the last time you updated your drivers (esp chipset drivers). A motherboard BIOS update (if available) may be a good idea as well.
 
Also Sonar X3E patch is out.
 
Thanks
 
Alex

Also check running processes on the machine. If you have not checked the system for malware or viruses, it is worth doing that as well. Infected files can be introduced via removable media also.

mettelus
Also check running processes on the machine. If you have not checked the system for malware or viruses, it is worth doing that as well. Infected files can be introduced via removable media also.

+1
 
This would be the first thing I would check. Check MSConfig to see what running on startup, do a virus scan, and download and install Malwarebytes and scan with it.
 
Taking a peek at your event viewer would be good too.

BTW running Windows Update should include a Malicious software removal tool which is a pretty good baseline check. I wouldn't draw any conclusions on whether this is a virus or not, but I don't disagree, and I would always recommend a virus scanner to be installed and running at all times (yes it can be configured so it does not get in the way of your DAW, plenty of info about that on other threads). I tend to avoid talking about viruses until all other areas are exhausted as any talk about viruses quite often leads to unnecessary panic and debates about which is the best virus scanner :)

Thanks for the quick suggestions.  Will give these a try and report back.