You need to look up the word disaster in that dictionary.

backwoods
You need to look up the word disaster in that dictionary.

And you need to look up the word, "subjective."

This is a communications crisis. Good luck with your disaster.

PT, I'm glad I didn't take the time to help you.  You sound like a pretentious jackass.   

PTravel,
 
Sheesh, if it's truly a disaster, then it was of your own making. 
 
You've been involved in IT for decades, but apparently don't know that it's unwise to install a major software upgrade to a production PC just a day or two after the upgrade's release!
 
I'm not convinced this is a bug; your description of the issue strongly suggests some sort of weird glitch during scanning.  Either way, see above statement.
 
I can only imagine the novel-length emails you must send Microsoft the days following new OS releases.  Oh wait, you don't upgrade your OS the day a new one is released?  Why not?  (Maybe see above statement?).
 
And since you won't accept congratulations for finding an awful, inelegant "kludge" to your problem, might we word it differently for your sensitivities?  Instead of kludge.... how about "Pirouette"?
 
Congratulations on your Pirouette!  A job well-done - even if you did make a huge kludge of it letting us know you did all the work. 

I've been troubleshooting my plug-ins in X3 while watching C-SPAN. Waves has licensing issues (not the case in X2a), VST Engine crashed several times, and right-clicking in FX Chain to Manage Plug-In layouts never brings anything up (this was an issue for me in X2a as well). I don't expect a flawless install, so I'm still working with it, but this wasn't 100% success for me.

JonD
PTravel,
 
Sheesh, if it's truly a disaster, then it was of your own making. 
 
You've been involved in IT for decades, but apparently don't know that it's unwise to install a major software upgrade to a production PC just a day or two after the upgrade's release!

I don't work in IT and music composition and recording is just a hobby I do after work.  As I mentioned, I've been using Cakewalk/Sonar since before it was a DAW.  I've never had a single serious issue with the software.  And, yes -- when a well-respected (and deserving of that respect) company like Cakewalk issues a new release, I expect it to work as advertised, not counting minor tweaks that get tweaked in a later update.  I use a lot of software of equal or greater complexity (in terms of programming) to Sonar.  I've never had a situation in which a program from a major publishing house crashed my computer in this fashion -- at least not by just using it as intended.
 

I'm not convinced this is a bug; your description of the issue strongly suggests some sort of weird glitch during scanning.  Either way, see above statement.

I never said it was a bug.  What I said was this: no one can code a program that runs perfectly on every computer in every conceivable hardware and software combination.  I also recognize that when coding for intensive I/O, it's usually necessary to by-pass the OS calls and go direct to the driver.  There's nothing wrong with that, but it risks incompatibilities in specific contexts.  What I find particularly frustrating is when a company's tech person presents a generalization as an absolute that I know to be false and resorts to the old, "it must be your driver/hardware" buck passing.
 

I can only imagine the novel-length emails you must send Microsoft the days following new OS releases.  Oh wait, you don't upgrade your OS the day a new one is released?  Why not?  (Maybe see above statement?).

You're right, I don't upgrade my OS the day a new one is released, and that's because I don't consider Microsoft a company that puts out extremely high-quality software.
 

And since you won't accept congratulations for finding an awful, inelegant "kludge" to your problem, might we word it differently for your sensitivities?  Instead of kludge.... how about "Pirouette"?

I like pirouette.  You were the one who put kludge in quotes in your original post, and kludge is exactly the right word. Unexplained computer crash aside, on two separate computers X3 found the Ozone and Celemony VST3s, but did not put them into the Effects Plug-in Browser, and the only way to get them in was to manually load them using the Plug-in Manager and then over-write the X3 Producer Effects preset.  THAT is the very definition of a kluge.
 

Congratulations on your Pirouette!  A job well-done - even if you did make a huge kludge of it letting us know you did all the work.

Uh . . . what?
 

I'm afraid that you are making lots of erroneous assumptions about how SONAR works as well as hypothetical claims about the cause of the crash based on outdated information about Windows. In the old days of Windows user mode programs could actually cause the entire OS to reboot. This is impossible in current OS's from Microsoft. User mode programs have a protected address space and cannot make "jumps" to memory out side that. SONAR doesn't "bypass OS calls" and go directly to the driver. Everything we do uses standard Windows API's.
I have outlined a strategy for narrowing down this problem for you and several others have suggested options. This is how we debug stuff. We won't get anywhere isolating the cause of the problem if you don't follow a systematic process of elimination. I suggest working with tech support if you want further resolution on this since its proving difficult to resolve here.

you can also turn off the auto-reboot & get chance to see the bsod msg...

lawp
you can also turn off the auto-reboot & get chance to see the bsod msg...

That's the first thing I would have done.