I can play the pads on the machine but when I hit the pads they aren't recording. When I hit the play button it is following Sonar but still won't let the sound record into sonar. I'll eventually find it somewhere.

Tell me your process in more detail dahjah, every step so I can better understand brother

I had other pressing matters I ad to do thus the reason why it`s taken me so long to get back to this.
So here goes:
first of all I use the VS 700 system, but I also like to make tracks in Maschine on it`s own.
I have the Maschine Mikro hooked to the pc through usb as well as the Impulse61. Before the migration to windows 8 from 7, I could use the transport on the impulse61 to control the maschine, which is much easier when I can concentrate on the one keyboard while recording in Maschine. So at this point I can play sound in Maschine from the keyboard but the transport I still can`t control for some reason.
 
In Sonar I can control the transport of Sonar from the Impulse61, I can also record in Sonar while using the keyboard (Impulse61)
In preferences in Sonar I have (MIDI) all checked in Devices that I use including Maschine Mikro and the Impulse.
I have no idea why when Maschine is a plugin I can`t play the pads on the Maschine and get it to record the performance, but when I use the Impluse I can, and when I`m outside of Sonar I can`t control the transport of Maschine from the keyboard. I feel they are connected somehow.

in the inspector do you have inputs midi omni all selected?

 
Yes midi omni is selected.