Actually I believe it is a Cakewalk problem, Sonar should have triggered the installation of the C++ library in it's installation manifest, or at the very least pointed to the missing dependencies. I would hope this to be fixed in X3D.

Hey Alex, You may be right. Going from my memory it seems that X3 did trigger a C++ library, but I think it was older like 2005 version. Of course I'm not going to re install in order to verify that. As we're finding out, it took the 2012 C++ library to get some of us going.

CakeAlexS
That's an interesting point though, when does X2 support officially expire?

I am sure that Cakewalk will offer you the best possible support for any version you are still running.
I would expect though that if you're running a version say on Win XP once even MS no longer support that OS, I don't think we can reasonably expect Cakewalk to keep machines with obsolete OSs running to offer support.just some thoughts based on long time usage and having read many thread regarding Cakewalk support.

As long as your PC meets the minimum specs I think you'd be fine.

Hi Mike sure, but that is just your (probably fair) assumption.

Normally software companies (i.e. Microsoft and Windows XP) have a product end of life date set way in advance, so it would be interesting to know what the Cake official stance is here.

Cakewalk have said before via several of their usual guys on the forum, that they stop OS support in connection with MS. That makes sense.

As to Software from Cakewalk: support as in updates stop once a new version is released. That seems obvious as in no X2b as X3 was released.

If I ring/email Cakewalk and said I was running Sonar 8.5 on a Win 7 system I would feel confident that they would try to help me as best they could. Don't forget Cakewalk support is free. I don't remember ever hearing on the forum that someone was refused some sort of support because they weren't on the current version.

I just had a look at the Cakewalk Support pages for info on something and realised:

You can look up documented support information on software as far back as the first Sonar version. The documentation, updates and other resources are quite surprising in their extent. I was looking for something in connection with Sonar 3 and with VC-64.

Again all probably fair assumptions....... but things can change Mike, Cake is now owned by Gibson and customer support costs aren't written on a back of a piece of paper (of maybe they are). So I'd be interested to hear what the horses mouth has to say....
 
And yes I mentioned Gibson and I know Cakewalk are pretty independent as well :).

Cheers.....

The problem with Windows 8.1 is that the Visual C++ update has to be applied (or possibly reapplied) after upgrading from Windows 8 or the Windows 8.1 "Preview" version.  I had that problem with both X2 and X3 in Windows 8.1. 
 
It should be noted that it isn't just Sonar that has the problem with 8.1.  I found the fix on another forum and people with Photoshop were having the exact same problem and the Visual C++ update had to be applied to fix the Photoshop problem.  Could be other software too that is affected.
 
Another issue, not related to Sonar, is that some older hardware that was supported in Windows 8 and the 8.1 "Preview" version is no longer supported in the final Windows 8.1 version. 

I wonder why the C++ redistributable catches some systems out.
I installed Win 8 on a new SSD, then immediately downloaded and installed the free 8.1 update. The first program I installed was Sonar x3. It went fine.

Perhaps that's it. Because I was installing on a brand new system there were no other c++ redistributable installations to confuse matters and let Sonar install the one it comes with.