Beep I have MSE on Vista. Thats where I found out about it. It is not a firewall. Its a very powerful anti-virus that does not interfere with your programs. It keeps a very low profile but is very effective.  The firewall was built into Vista. Windows Defender is the anti-virus part. In Windows 8 you can turn it off if you want or remove it. I have no reason to use another anti virus so I can't comment on that.  

Windows 8 adds Smart Screen which wont allow a program to start unless you let it. Its further UAC control that is not an imposition like the UAC in Vista was. I turned mine off in Vista because it got in the way. In Windows 8 I have all the security working. Once you let a program run Windows 8 wont stop it again. Vista had a bad habit of always stopping programs and asking if it was OK to run. That got old quickly. 

Really MS has made great strides in security. The OS is very difficult to infect. Not that is can't be but its no where as easy as it used to be. The core system and kernel are nicely protected too.   

IMHO: If you don't like Sonar, don't go to another PC-based DAW. Get dedicated DAW hardware. Otherwise, history will repeat itself. 

Mr Jim well put I guess you may just react in a way that will rub people up the wrong way sometimes. Especially, if things have been said before and it seems to be the same old same old age old problems. It's like having car trouble and someone else has the same model as you and theirs tuns like a peach.... If i don't need new equipment or the latest mod bod then I just don't need it. However, if I have the money or I accumulate within a time period then yes I may think about upgrading. If I upgrade to X2 I will update all my equipment it wouldnt be profitable for me to tak half measures.

Danny Danzi


At times it reminds me of a chick that you have to tread softly with. Watch every little thing you say or she will explode on you.

Yeah, but what a chick...reminds me of my ex...
 
I have had my share of Cakewalk/Sonar issues on occasion and have always managed to get them sorted out by methodically working through the problem. Honestly, I miss the old days where we could explicitly tell Windows which IRQ was to be used for what device. Now that we have limited/no control, it can be a crapshoot when booting as to whether an interface will be stable or not.
 
Regards,
Dan

Key word "methodically".
Another one "document".
Key phrase "level set".

All essential to basic troubleshooting of any type of problem from your car to Sonar.

Scatter shoot round and round and after a while it becomes a confused mess of he said she said and so forth.

I think the OP is on track towards  getting to the bottom of it so let's start from scratch and see what we as a group can come up with to help her. Some good suggestions (dump Norton) have been made already.

Beepster

With Windows 8 Windows Defender is built in

hmm... I hope they allow you to use other AVs if you wanted. MSE is fine for my DAW but Avast has been on my surfing computers for years and barring any major downfall likely always will be.

Also... Windows Defender is on my 7 systems but I think it's more of a firewall thingy. I'm a little confused. Is the Defender/MSE on 8 a special version of MSE or something? Surely it's not the standard MSE release if they changed the name.

I have no idea what the difference between MSE and Defender is, all I know is that the whole shebang was preinstalled with Windows 7 when I upgraded, certainly don't recall having to download anything extra. Maybe I'm wrong though. 


Like you, I too used Avast for years because it seemed to be the best freeware AV out there. However, once I started to read about MSE being just as good as any other AV, I ditched Avast purely because it seemed wasteful to have it installed when a more OS-integrated AV was already there. To date, nothing has happened to make me think that Avast was a better AV. 


There's an article here which stacks Avast against MSE in terms of computer impact, and the both scored almost the same, so I don't think there's going to be any kind of performance advantage with one over the other.

http://dottech.org/14151/...vs-avast-vs-avg/