1. 32-bit XP can reference only 4 GB of memory
2. 64-bit Windows 7 can access 192 GB memory
3. You need to go through a somewhat painful exercise of stopping things like antivirus programs and also services that are not used for audio processing sessions. This will allow access to more memory, and will also potentially eliminate the kinds of dropout problems you are experiencing. Things like print spooling, antivirus programs, and anything connected to IP processing or networking are NOT needed during audio processing sessions. Sometimes antivirus programs (or others) DO interfere with audio processing applications, such as Sonar.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go through and turn things off, one at a time, on a temporary basis, to try to see if anything per item 3 above is contributing to your audio dropouts. If you find something that is, you have to either work around it, temporarily disable it during audio sessions, or permanently disable it.
If you find nothing on your system is interfering in any way, shape, or form, THEN you may have exposed some sort of bug within Sonar, although it STILL could be at that point an issue with your audio interface drivers, some unneeded but present hardware device (parallel port), or a bios/chip-set issue.
Nobody can help you with this set of issues if you haven't exhausted the above possibilities.
Lastly, can your system be upgraded to the 64-bit Windows 7? I was a DIE-HARD fan of XP Pro, but Windows 7 is ABSOLUTELY a better OS. That is also something for you to explore.
Please respond to the above points,
Bob Bone