It was stated somewhere when X2 was released.  I took the risk with Vista but I knew there was a chance of problems. So far so good, but I have not tried X2a.
NI, FX-expansion, Cakewalk and many others no longer support XP or Vista.

Vista is obsolescent and XP is obsolete. Maintaning backwards compatibility for a small number of users is probably not economical and if you want your application to take advantage of the latest developments in Win 8 its probably not possible either without releasing two versions.

planetearth


Maybe they changed the upgrade page since early November, when I bought X2. I see that the Loopmasters pack mentioned on the page, and that wasn't available when I bought the upgrade; it was added shortly afterward, though.

Steve

X2 came out in Oct. I upgraded to Win 8 in Nov. X2a come out in Dec. All along CW made it very clear that XP would no longer be supported. One big reason I upgraded to Win 8 from Vista. And they made it clear that Vista users would no longer be supported. They were not so sure about X2a running on Vista. They were very sure that X2a would not work with XP.  This was never hidden or kept secret. 

I can see how it may have not been clear to you if you didn't keep an eye on this forum but it was and is part of the system requirements. I checked when they announced X2. I could have stayed with Vista because Vista will run X2a but no where does CW say they recommend Vista for X2. They made it very clear that XP was totally out of the picture. 

They are in way responsible for you not getting all the information.   

In fairness to the OP when X2 first came out CW were very ambiguous about the XP issue. Brandon went as far as to say on this forum that there was no specific reason that it wouldn't work with XP just that it wasn't "offically" supported. He even said that there would be the possibilty of some degree of unoffical support for issues that were not OS related.  I'm sure that a few XP users decided to purchase based on this info. Later in the same thread Noel ( I think ) said that the stuff required for win 8 compatability probably would not work with XP, so onve that was implemented that would be that.

As I understand it, X2a is not just the win 8 update, but also fixes a fair amount of non related issues. Given that the initial info given here was a little misleading, I think that it would not be unreasonable for those who took the chance based on Brandon's advice to be given a seperate patch without the win 8 stuff so that they can at least have the regular fixes. I say that not knowing at all if that is technically possible, but if it is then CW should do the right thing.

I guess we now need to get used to a broken search system and a tree control that jumps to the bottom when opening a node...
 
@John: have Microsoft fixed these issues in Win8 desktop mode?

Thanks, Paulo. That would certainly be helpful. My main problem is the Plug-In Manager crashing every time I open it from within Sonar X2. After the first crash, I can restart Sonar, and all is fine. But if I just run the manager's executable outside of Sonar, it doesn't show any VST instruments--so it's useless. I don't need updates to a touch-screen feature that I (and most users) will never use, or to fix things that Windows 8 patches broke. I just want a stable DAW that doesn't require me buying a whole new computer. Steve

JazzSinger


I guess we now need to get used to a broken search system and a tree control that jumps to the bottom when opening a node...
 
@John: have Microsoft fixed these issues in Win8 desktop mode?

I'm not sure I know what you are talking about. Are you asking about the file explorer in Windows 8? Its very different you may or may not like it. Searching is much improved and fast. 

Yes, the file explorer. In Win7, open a node, then another node, ...

At some point it starts to jump to the bottom when you open a node and you cannot see the contents. You have to scroll it up. Then you open another node, jumps down again...

This does not happen in XP.

And the search often does not find files directly where you are.

I understood the Win8 desktop (not the Metro/Modern interface) is pretty much Win7 unchanged?

What is a node  Is that a folder? A program?

I am not trying to be funny I really don't use that term. I understand node when used in reference to networking.


Now for the Win 7 vs Win 8 desktop. I can't say because I didn't run Win 7 except to test it out in its pre release. I don't believe they are the same though.  MS did a lot to the explorer in Win 8. 

 

 Another XP user here, there was a hotfix out that corrected most of the gui issues before the X2a patch, it will install on XP.  If it's any conciliation, X2 with the hotfix runs better for the most part than X1d here. Only problem I have here is on older projects that I started with Sonar 7. 
 I knew full well when upgrading to X2 that support would be stopping at the "a" patch. I'm not ready to chuck out the mouse and keyboard for a touch screen so I'm content with what I have.

Thanks, ohgrant. I'd forgotten about that update, and I did see it mentioned on Facebook. Unfortunately, I can't find it on Cakewalk's Website, under Sonar X2 Knowledgbase issues, and it doesn't appear to be on Cakewalk's Facebook page any longer, either.
 
Does anyone know where the update can be found?
 
Steve
 
Actually, I found it here: http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/kb/reader.aspx/2007013292