Jim Roseberry


RAM is often the cause of instability.
Test your RAM to make sure all is well.

Just for the record, I used to routinely ignore this troubleshooting step because I'd never had RAM go bad in 30-odd years of personal computing.


Then my DAW started acting up a few months ago, and after exhaustive testing to eliminate every possible cause I could think of other than hardware failure, I finally got around to running Memtest, and it didn't even pass the initialization phase!


I pulled sticks one at a time until I found the culprit, tried it in a different slot to be sure it wasn't the board, then replaced it, and I was back in business!


It still isn't the first thing I would suspect (drivers and O/S or software updates are still  more likely culprits in most cases), but it should be on the short list of things to check for an issue like this.

Muziekschuur at home


Are you recording to a second disk?

Yes.

munmun

Muziekschuur at home


Are you recording to a second disk?

Yes.

Internal or Externa?l
Laptop or Desktop?
7200 rpm?


Hope fully it's not a "green" drive

Internal desktop 7200rpm

It still isn't the first thing I would suspect (drivers and O/S or software updates are still  more likely culprits in most cases), but it should be on the short list of things to check for an issue like this.

FWIW, DDR2 was far less prone to failure.


If you're experiencing stability issues, boot related issues, etc... DDR3 is a very likely culprit.
Some brands have a particularly high failure rate (Corsair).   

Agree with all posted so far.
1) I have a copy of reaper 64 bit for checking things out like this.  (two of my favorite fun plugs work in reaper 64bit but not in Sonar X2A (Catanya and Harmonizer)
2) I had a RAM issue once as well.  Very weird stuff.  My second bank of RAM was bad.  I could watch my RAM fill up with a large BFD2 kit and then the whole PC would just go stupid.  The RAM even passed a memory test.  I just replaced it and no more issues.
3) I also believe, but I have not been able to conclusively ever prove that there are certain graphics adapters that cause all kinds of issues with certain plugs and certain combinations of DAWs and plugs.  I had an issue with Melodyne causing Sonar  8.5 to crash every time.  The only thing I ever saw was my exact graphics adapter mentioned in the Melodtyne forums a few tmes with similar issues.  No one at Melodyne seemd to thing there was a problem so I nver bought the plug.

Other than some weird vsti midi out issues that are known and never been fixed (AFIK) Sonar 8.5, X1 and X2 have been rock solid for me.