Hi everyone.
 
I haven't had a ton of issues with sonar that i haven't been able to solve, but this is truly stumping me. I'm not sure what caused it, but every time i open X2, it loads the vsts, the splash screen goes away, and it opens up the x2 interface as you'd expect (see attached screenshot)
 
However, it stays stuck there, i get the spinning wheel in windows 7 and can't click on anything (not even to close the program). The odd thing is that it does not show as unresponsive and isn't doing a white or blank screen. In fact, in task manager, it's barely taking up any cpu or ram. I've been using X2 for months now and this is the first time this is happening to me.
 
Is anyone else having this issue?
 
Thanks in advance!

try going to your projects folder and find a project...double click on the project icon.
this will boot start your project right into sonar, to open that project.
this might tell you a couple things.
 
have you made any changes to the plug in manager ?
do you remember anything strange when you closed your last project ?
like a plug in you used that have never used before ?
 
did you do any windows updates lately ?
check your update log.
 
let me know.

hi chuckebaby, thanks for the reply! When i try to open a project from explorer, it actually doesn't open...it shows as if there's no program to open it and when i choose x2 it doesn't do anything.
I did recently add 3 plugins:
d16's Fazortan and d16's Syntorus, as well as Softubes spring reverb.
 
I tried renaming the vst folder so it wouldn't scan it at startup, so the vst scanner went away very quickly, but it's still freezing at the same point. I don't recall anything out of the ordinary when closing the program last time. It looks like there is a windows update that was recently installed (on the 19th), maybe that caused it? How would i know which of the updates is the problem? should i just revert to a restore point before the update?
 
Also, I'm always tweaking the plugin manager since i have my own custom layout for all my plugins, and come to think of it I have been getting a dialog box every time i add an effect that not all plugins could be displayed in the list...but i fee like i've been getting that for a while now. Hope this helps you help me.

I've had some similar problems, but I think it has to do with the last VST (SampleTank) I installed. But I at least get the load project screen and as long as I don't load a project with SampleTank on it first, then I have no problem. Otherwise, I've ended up doing the ctrl-alt-del to close it down and start over. If I load a SampleTank project second, there's no problem. I've contacted IKM and they seem to think there was an install problem too. So they're working with me to resolve it. But check your VSTs too, not just the path scans maybe?
If you think it's an update doing it, have you tried doing a Windows restore?

I seem to dimly (and I MEAN dimly) recall this kind of issue happening in the past when a newly-added effect or synth needed to have its license authorized, and it was causing Sonar to pretty much just sit there.
 
I would suggest you check those recent installs and look to see if you have to run them in a stand-alone fashion to get them authorized to run.
 
The other thing I am wondering is if you (in addition to the above) may want to make sure you are running Sonar as Administrator (explicitly setting that option under the Advanced tab in the Properties dialog box for Sonar).
 
Please review the above and respond, 
 
Bob Bone
 

@BBFG# : Though i have had issues with sampletank in the past, since i started using Jbridge, it seems to work fairly well most of the time, but the issue i'm experiencing is before i even get to open a project. Thanks for the input though! glad to hear i'm not the only one who had issues with ik's plugins.
 
@robert_e_bone : you may be on to something there....I just moved the vst folder to my desktop (leaving no plugins to scan or authorize) and now sonar is still doing the same thing, however there is a new window from novation's automap software saying that my mkII sl49 needs an os update....maybe this window was unable to display because of the plugin scan or something...I'm letting it update my sl49 and see what happens. I'll post back in a few.

ive only seen this due to a plug in manager path that was entered incorrectly or a vst folder deleted or moved completely.
it could possibly be a update or reg thing but try to put that folder back you said you had moved and see what happens.
its possible this folder contained sensitive material need to operate sonar correctly.
but hey... right now anything is basically a guess until we see something positive  :)
 
i'll keep poping in to see how your making out.
 
 
PS- sometimes task manager can prove effective in seeing something else like a possible virus.
I know you probably don't have a virus but sometimes thumbing through task manager one can see something that just does not look right.
like jbridge / bitbridge not running.
or even something running that would prevent sonar from opening up properly.
for instance if sonarpdr is running its impossible for sonar to exe at all.
unlikely in your case because you at least are able to open up the main program.
 
 

So here's where i'm at so far. As i mentioned in my previous post, i had a hunch that my novation automap software was somehow messing up. Especially since i think sonar scans devices after vst plugins (correct me if i'm wrong...) . So the update to my sl49 midi controller's os just hung...even in the standalone application. That makes me think it's more of a Novation issue than a sonar one. So i updated my automap software to the lastest version (4.7) and didn't notice any popup about updating the os on my device so i opened up Sonar and it didn't hang...hmmm....so i opened up a pretty hefty project to test out and it seems to be working fine (except that there's no effects loading due to the vst folder i moved). Everything worked great. So i closed it and re-opened it just to  confirm before i put the vst folder back in place......aaand it's hanging again. i'm so confused.
 
*edit*
I'm not getting the message from automap to update my sl49 again...and it's still not updating correctly. Maybe i'll try uninstalling everything automap and opening up sonar to confirm the problem.

WOOHOO!! confirmed! So i uninstalled anything Novation Automap and put the vst plugins folder back in it's place. Opened sonar and it's working perfectly. Restarted again to confirm, still works great as long as my sl49 is not plugged in and automap doesn't start with sonar....Now i gotta figure out how to fix automap or find a new controller, but at least i know what the issue is :) Thank you EVERYONE for all the help and input. Hopefully this thread will help someone in the future experiencing a similar issue.

great, I had a feeling that was it.
like I said, the only time id ever seen something like this was removing / deleting folders.
good to hear, best of luck with your next issue  :)