Guys,
I don't get it? I recorded a bunch of stuff and don't remember changing anything? All of a sudden I'm getting crashes and bad latency when recording instruments(guitars & bass) direct into my interface. 
I've played with my asio settings and the buffers and I can't for the life of me figure it out! I'm stumped and a tad frustrated, but not enough to give up! It's probably something simple I missed or accidentally tweaked?
HELP!

A shot in the dark is try looking for a virus or the like. Check what is loading via task manager.

Sudden crashing when none were happening is to me a symptom of something in the background causing the problem.

Hopefully some else can point you in the right direction.  

Could also be PDC at work. I've been having a lot of confusion about this recently. Click the PDC button to disable it and see if the latency disappears. It might...but then again you might hear other tracks drift out of time because the PDC was compensating for some plug or other. Anyways, try and pick the bones out of this thread:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2784398

Skarke,   
 you are Da Man......that was it. Thanks bro!!!

DaddyV


Skarke,   
you are Da Man......that was it. Thanks bro!!!

No probs! So I've learned that the solution is to either find out which plugs are causing the PDC to kick in (usually plugs that look ahead) and delete them, or to turn off the PDC temporarily while recording new parts. 

Forgive my ignorance here, but what is PDC how do you disable it? I just want to know for future reference...thanks!

From the manual :

"Although SONAR supports streaming audio at very low latency, there are cases where internal buffering can cause additional latency. The most common scenario is when using plug-ins that require Automatic Plug-in Delay Compensation (PDC).

PDC is the process of delay compensating other normal tracks so they are synchronized with the delayed audio produced by the plug-ins. Whenever delay compensation takes place on a track that has a live input (an input monitored track or synth track), it is delayed by the required amount to synchronize it with other tracks. In some cases, the delay can be noticeable and make live tracking difficult."

There's a PDC button in the mix module of the Control Bar.

Lesson learned! I have a habit of trying things as I go along. 
You know, the typical mad scientist? 
I will have to be more careful with plugs till I'm in the mix phase from now on!

Thanks again Sharke!

I hope this thread helps others on down the line!

I often hit the FX button in track view to turn off all plugins when I record in a project I've added many plugins to and that also decreases latency.