I agree with Charlie - the registry needs cleaning up after ANY big software un-install, the operative word being big, like Sonar, Office, Visual Studio etc.

FYI, ever tried un-installing Office just by using its Un-installer ? It leaves many registry strings a-gogo behind.

One thing i would add to Charlie' s reco is to use a safe registry cleaner such as Ccleaner ( i run it after every install and un-install, never had a problem since it came out).

THEN you'll have a relatively healthy registry.

Each to his own, editing or rather cleaning the registry is not such a traumatic experience as its made out to be, there are multiple tutorials from reputable mags, sites etc out there.

But this is only my opinion !

Cheers,
Jerry

Whatever a user does to keep his system running smoothly is all fine by me. I just object to registry diving being in the reference guide as part of regular procedure (silently?) endorsed by Cake. Ryan has put my mind at ease somewhat in that respect, though.
I would still prefer an option during uninstall, perhaps under advanced and with a clear warning, that lets you remove all Cakewalk Registry Keys. The worst you could do with that is lose Cakewalk Preferences if you screw up. I also don't understand why Sonar Producer X2 specific keys are shared by Sonar Producer X3, but I'll take Ryan's word for that.

Ryan Munnis [Cakewalk]
The page fail trying to direct you to support has been resolved. Our redirect was broken. I'm sorry for the confusion on that. :/
 

 
thanks,..
 

In all fairness to Cakewalk, who from Cakewalk recommended you dive into your registry to fix this problem? Unless I'm missing it, I'm not sure we've even discussed what problems you're running into. Perhaps that might be a better place to start versus starting from the last resort?

 
I'm finding each time I used sonar come across irritating issues - albeit I'm new to this - manly latency, if not latency the application crashes, inconsistent playback/recording - sometimes recording to audio track doesn't work while I can see I have armed the track and sound is clearly visible in the level, nothing gets recorded.  Times where I exit from sonar and then later start and open the last saved project, playback/record settings have all changed under the audio driver section. There's other silly things that happen,... 
 
 

Keep in mind that "Clean Installation" steps are always provided with great care when we assist customers with this directly. This is not part of the normal process and it is not usually required. It might not even be required in this case but I don't know the extend of the issues you're running into. The installer/uninstaller we use is pretty standard (probably one of the most common ones in Windows actually). Honestly I hate discussing registry keys with customers, so you're preaching to the choir. It's a very sensitive area.

 
 
Now, because I have installed Music Creator, Sonar X1 LE and other 3rd party software along with finally sonar X2 and X2a - I have decided to perform a clean install to see if I can get some consistency and stability,...
 
I've reinstalled and surprised all my previous settings are saved - so I've again uninstalled and cleaned up manually all areas of cakewalk files and settings including shared areas...
 

Technically whether it's possible to do it or not, the problem with wiping all keys on an uninstaller is that a lot of components are shared across multiple versions of SONAR, so to wipe the keys on an uninstall means that you would have to always start over from scratch. So if you upgraded and then removed your older version, you'd be wiping out references to things you wish you hadn't. Any custom settings made to things like the Plug-in Manager would be erased. It would create more problems then it would solve.

 
TBH I suspect my problem is a certain percentage user error, (but then again though shouldn't cause application exceptions). Most importantly though the mix of devices I have such as Samson G-Track uses MME 32 and focusrite uses ASIO, and to through in the Samson Graphite 49 control surface, changing between these modes (MME and ASIO and WDM, etc,..) seems like Sonar can't handle it too well - in fact not well at all is what I've unfortunately experienced.
 

Either way, removing shared registry keys is frowned upon by Microsoft and will prevent official certification.

hmmm, that's debatable... depends on the context - I wouldn't think removing Cakewalk registry keys would officially affect certifications your referring to.
 
My original post here was really to try and get to contact Sales assistant in choosing the right product for me and to see if I could be considered for a "better" deal as I have only had Sonar X2 Studio for about 1 month and 1 week and have each time had problems with it, which I see is buggy and the fact that these bugs won't be addressed by any further updates to X2a.  I would think this is in a way fair; if I do pay the full upgrade price for X3 that it could be for Producer version or optionally pay for a special upgrade price of my existing X2 Studio to X3 Studio or to secure a full refund for an upgrade price from Sonar X1 LE or Music Creator 6 Touch to Sonar X3 Studio or Producer since all the fuss is about X3 now anyway...
 
Thanks for your help - I'll be re-installing X2 again to see if a fresh clean install without all the other noisy products previously installed make any difference.
 
Kind Regards
Jim

JimmyBoy
 
...I'll be re-installing X2 again to see if a fresh clean install without all the other noisy products previously installed make any difference.
 

That is absolutely what I would recommend.  Start with the minimum possible hardware and software, verify that works, then proceed to build on it.
 

Sanderxpander
By the way I'm assuming you have seen this and don't qualify?
http://www.cakewalk.com/p...-free-SONAR-X3-Upgrade

Jim, I wanted to make sure you saw this post. You should qualify for a free X3 upgrade based on the date of your upgrade to X2. In all of the sidetracking of this thread, I (personally) would skip a re-install of X2 and jump right into X3. My personal experience with X2 was the worst of any SONAR edition (4, 5, 7, X1, X2, X3).
 
Michael

I am not sure V-Vocal comes with X3 or not, but for sure you can get it with X2 install.
 
Bob Bone

mettelus

Sanderxpander
By the way I'm assuming you have seen this and don't qualify?
http://www.cakewalk.com/p...-free-SONAR-X3-Upgrade

Jim, I wanted to make sure you saw this post. You should qualify for a free X3 upgrade based on the date of your upgrade to X2. In all of the sidetracking of this thread, I (personally) would skip a re-install of X2 and jump right into X3. My personal experience with X2 was the worst of any SONAR edition (4, 5, 7, X1, X2, X3).
 
Michael

 
Hi Michael, I don't qualify - interesting though as I don't see any difference between retail and the online store except for the fact you get the box
 

NOTE: SONAR X2 Upgrades purchased via the Cakewalk Store
do not qualify for a free SONAR X3 upgrade.

It says upgrades. Didn't you say you got a full version? I may have misremembered.

Sanderxpander
It says upgrades. Didn't you say you got a full version? I may have misremembered.

Upgrade or full version why should there be a difference, I would expect patching to continue for any previous version for at "least" a year after the new version was released, in fact I know that other software vendors support the current version including one previous version, in some cases support 2 to 3 previous versions - why should anyone have to purchase another upgrade within the year they purchased an upgrade so to stabilize the version they've only just purchased, (in my case just over a month ago)? 
Anyway, I've re-installed x2 and x2a clean, I haven't yet connected Samson devices (graphite 49 control surface/midi keyboard and G-Track) but using the Scarlette 2i4 with success.  I want to stay away from using MME mode on my notebook as latency is terrible and the G-track seems only to work with MME.  I've tried WDM which I would have thought would be best since windows 8 is supposedly improved - however I think ASIO for the scarlette is working much better than using WDM...
 
  

JimmyBoy
...Anyway, I've re-installed x2 and x2a clean, I haven't yet connected Samson devices (graphite 49 control surface/midi keyboard and G-Track) but using the Scarlette 2i4 with success.  I want to stay away from using MME mode on my notebook as latency is terrible and the G-track seems only to work with MME.  I've tried WDM which I would have thought would be best since windows 8 is supposedly improved - however I think ASIO for the scarlette is working much better than using WDM...
 
  

Good to hear you've got X2a up and running!   I'm not familair with the Samson gear, but it sounds as though it may have been part of the problem before.
 
Regarding the Focusrite, though the WDM drivers work OK I've found the ASIO drivers to be a little more consistent/stable with my 18i6, running on Win7 64.   I'd personally recommend sticking with those for now.    FWIW, while the project is in its beginning stages I can keep latency all the way at the low end around 2ms, but even under heavier loads (usually while mixing) I've never had to go much higher than 20ms.  This is on a Q9300 so certainly not a high-end system by any means.
 
My only other recommendation would be to watch for X3 sales as the holidays approach.