So many times I have had tracks fail. Panning might fail to work or automation fails to respond. Only solution to to paste to a new track. Cloning won't work. That just clones the bug too.  I just can't believe that 8.5 is so buggy. And what about piano roll and it's oftentimes sudden failure to draw controllers ? Only solution I have found is to close existing PRV and reopen.
 

You should change to windows 7 64 bit, I have not had any issues since. None like your talking there. Windows 7 64 bit and Sonar 8.5 are very very stable. I work a little most every day and sometimes 12 hours. Live audio and lots of MIDI too. 

Can't go to 7. Way to much $ and TIME (=$) invested in my network of machines running fx teleport, sample libraries, authorizations, yada yada. Glad it works for you though.

I experienced issues in this category and ridiculous bugs when I used to run beautiful stable Windows XP 32bit PC with a Quad processor and 4 GB RAM running Sonar 8.5, I was far more stable with Sonar 6 and 7 on XP but 8.5 was buggy. 
I had windows 7 in every laptop and desktop around the house and the office except in the Studio Rig, I was afraid of change and had way too much invested to make the switch.  I understand you completely.   I made the switch sometime ago earlier in 2012 and my projects came to a halt for sometime while I sorted many many things out, some incompatibilities with plugins running on 64 bit instead of 32bit, some issues with hardware and interfaces and its interaction with Win7, as well as many other issues with other software I use. 
I slowly sorted things out and looked for every solution, some cost me time and $$ or upgrades, with upgrades come learning curves and different ways of doing some things, but in the end everything is running perfectly now and Sonar 8.5.3 is extremely stable on windows 7 64bit.... its like night and day... 
I may add that the PC I run now is a powerhouse and that's a huge factor, but the CODE itself behind windows 7 and its way of running Sonar is very stable.  You only DROP audio engine, but do not crash.  I don't crash, ever... 
For the first time in years working audio production have I remained this LONG without a single crash.  It's heavenly. 
You'll be forced to switch someday, its inevitable, but you still have time... XP is not a dinosaur just yet, but the inability to see RAM above 3GB and the motherboards only taking DDR2 and the ones that take DDR3 may install XP but may not fully benefit from the speed increase as well and the inability to support USB 3.0 are all downsides and Microsoft can patch things up and make WinXP do all these things but they choose not to, they force everyone to move up. so frustrating... I'm already annoyed that windows 8 is out and I HATE THE INTERFACE AND THE WAY IT WORKS>> HATE IT.   IT IS SO: "TABLET-LIKE"  and windows 8 is VERY VERY bad and unstable for the work we do, just read endless threads of issues win8.
:)   thx and good luck my friend.





 

You certainly don't need to upgrade to Win7

Your system is much more powerful than my old DAW which was XP32 based

You don't say whether your running 32 or 64 bit, for Windows or Sonar - this might be relevant.

8.5.3 was, for many users, an extremely stable release, so I think it's something to do with your setup.

You could try a full reinstall of 8.5 but make sure you remove these 2 registry keys after running the uninstaller:


HKEY_Current_User\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR 8.5
HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR 8.5

I hope its not XP 64-bit because that's not even supported by Sonar.... never was. 

imagine, sonar 7 and 8.5 buggy ?

kinda makes the X series look awesome.

which it is.

Yes.. buggy  lol
I think MR. PIANODANO doesnt specify OS 32 or 64bit XP but l assumed 32bit.
My previous reply to him was regarding his impending switch to win7-64, which like "Bristol Jonesey" says he doesn't have to yet. 
I'm a firm believer of  "if it ain't broke don't fix it"  I could get a bit attached with whatever works fine and that's why I delay upgrades and have a tendency to run into dinosaur setups because I stay a step or two behind.  I also like to wait until things get stable before jumping to the newest things, especially OS.  Well, also the same for X1 and X2.  See now I'm willing to jump to X2, but when X1 first came out, I ignored it for a while...  I will take my time to get X2, first play with it in a different PC just to get my feet wet and then make the full switch. I'm careful and conservative like that. 

FYI I run S.PE 8.5.3 both versions installed on Win7(64), 16GB DDR3, Corei7 3770
 I have the 32bit Sonar because of dozens of my plugins that bit-bridge does not work with. The rest of my system specs are listed in signature

I did stop having all the issues I was having with XP using Sonar 8.5, including V-vocal crashes, automation errors, clock sync errors, bounced tracks with flat line errors.... all went away with win7 64.  I did have a good PC when I had WinXP and all those things weren't performance related but just bugs...