Yikes! I've been sitting through the lengthy scan process at startup assuming it was necessary, so after reading this thread I turned off the two rescan settings, as recommended, then rebooted my computer and got stuck in and endless list of error messages telling me that the computer couldn't start the program. After at least five minutes -- literally -- of clicking on what I suspected must have been a loop of error messages I was able to access Sonar X2. I turned the rescan settings back on. I'll live with it.
 

That is not typical. Are you running SONAR as administrator?

Can I presume that this is also true of Sonar 8.5?

No. In his post Noel said it was a recent fix. A later version of X1 or the new X2.  

That is not typical. Are you running SONAR as administrator?

 
I'm not sure.   It's a new computer from Sweetwater running Windows 7, and they did the tweaks for audio. I've done very little so far other than load software and figure out how to use it. If I have to set it up to run as administrator, then I haven't done that. So far most of it is running according to the default settings.

It might be worth a shot. There is no need to constantly rescan plugins. The default setup for VST scanning would be to have both rescan buttons unchecked and scan on startup checked. If you did not change the default scan parameters, Sweetwater did. I would ask them why they configured it that way since it is contrary to the recommended configuration by Cakewalk and why the box is performing in such a strange way when configured correctly.

The default setup for VST scanning would be to have both rescan buttons unchecked and scan on startup checked. If you did not change the default scan parameters, Sweetwater did. I would ask them why they configured it that way since it is contrary to the recommended configuration by Cakewalk and why the box is performing in such a strange way when configured correctly.

 
Just to clarify, the computer didn't come from Sweetwater with Sonar installed & set up, I bought it and installed it after I received the computer, so any tweaks to Sonar would be the things I've done (very few). I had already turned off one of the rescan options, but the other was still on.
 
Some of the items in the list of things that couldn't be found after I turned off the other rescan option didn't look as though they are part of Sonar, but rather features of Windows 7, but I could be wrong. I probably should contact Sweetwater tech support with more detailed information and see what their assessment of the problem is.
 
I didn't mean to hijack this thread from the original poster, but thanks for offering suggestions for solving my issue. I wanted to alert others who might try this of a potential problem. I still need to check to see if I'm running it as Administrator to find out if that corrects the problem.