Lately I've been getting a lot of the "general error" messages when saving files. What causes this?

Don't know the cause, but I can usually hit the "Run/Stop Audio Engine" twice and it will clear the error ( usually a result of saving the file that brings the error up...doing this allows me to execute the save).
 
I've never heard a good explanation for this error :)

dcmg
Don't know the cause, but I can usually hit the "Run/Stop Audio Engine" twice and it will clear the error ( usually a result of saving the file that brings the error up...doing this allows me to execute the save).
 
I've never heard a good explanation for this error :)

Yes that's exactly how it happens and the fix. Last I checked there was no explanation of why, so I thought I'd throw out the question again to see if anyone has a clue on this one.
 
It seems to me it's afflicting certain versions of Plat. Many many years ago I saw this error then I didn't see it again until about 2 years ago and since then it pops up. I'm currently using 2017.04 Since I had some problems with some other versions.

This is common when something is still running (Like a VST soft synth).
Its the same error in Windows explorer when you try to save or delete something that is still in use.
 
I would try to problem solve it by narrowing down which plug in it is that's causing the general error.

Another way around it is to start playback (spacebar) and then save (CTRL S) while it's running.  I learned that one from Craig A.

File system corruption with respect to your project. Do a save as to a different file name. If that works you're out of the woods and you can delete or rename the corrupt one.

I don't get "general errors" but I sometimes get "shared access violations" when saving a project. 

I often have had " this program has stopped working and would you like to send an error report" pop up after I've Saved and then exported a song. I go to close the project and get this message. No harm done as I had just saved but it's certainly the kind of things I wish would have been fixed. And these are dead simple projects with only 4 or 5 midi tracks and stock Sonar VST's. 

The only time I saw this was on a large project. I bumped up the disk I/O buffers to 512 and never saw it again.

Start/Stop transport has worked for me the few times I've encountered this. I also found that I was able to save to a different location without starting/stopping, so it does same that is has something to do with Windows 'thinking' the project or audio files are in use by some other app - possibly a virus scanner. You might want to check that Microsoft Security Essentials doesn't have 'real-time protection' enabled. That somehow got enabled automatically on my system once, and caused all kinds of issues with opening and running projects till I noticed MsMpEng.exe process was going wild scanning SONAR-related files, including plugins that weren't even used in the project.