If you have plugins (effects) loaded on any of the tracks, whether you are recording or playing back does not matter - the effects will still be active unless powered off or disabled.
Some 32-bit plugins, running in a 64-bit Sonar, DO cause crashes, and many folks have completely moved away from having any 32-bit plugins even present in any VST search paths their 64-bit Sonar uses. If there ARE any 32-bit plugins still being used by those folks, they generally make sure that specific testing has found them to still work in 64-bit Sonar.
When Sonar crashes and stays stuck in memory, do you also see something called BitBridge in memory as well? If so, then for SURE you have 32-bit plugins present in the project that was active at the point of crash of Sonar.
Lastly, when Sonar hangs in memory like what you may be experiencing, some folks find that unplugging their audio interface may cause resources to be able to be freed up, helping to free Sonar from memory. They then plug their interface back in, and that may allow Sonar to be launched again.
So, it looks to me like you have at least 2 issues: first, that Sonar is crashing in the first place, and 2nd, it hanging in memory. IF the crashes are caused by one or more specific 32-bit plugins, then removing them from your active project may well eliminate the crashes, and even if not part of why Sonar is crashing, by not having them present would also eliminate the loading of BitBridge by Sonar, which may help free up resources in memory anyways.
Bob Bone