Really lovin' all the new toys in X2. But after years of m-audio firewire driver hangups, I finally gave up and bought a quad capture with X2. For the most part it works great with the program. But sometimes when I try to close a fairly busy project I get the Windows spinning wheel of death waiting for the program to close. Once the deadly wheel appears, the only way to close the program is to force it to close. Once that happens, the drivers are "in use" invisibly in the computer somewhere. If I try to then start anything that uses the quad, it tells me either that the device is not available or the drivers are in use elsewhere. With my firewire device I had to physically turn off the computer, wait for a reboot to get my drivers back. Now with the quad, since it's usb, I can unplug it and replug and I'm back to work. Is there some way I can end this problem once and for all, or at least a way to free up the drivers without a replug? Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Here is a recipe you can try. Before you close the project stop the audio engine in the control bar and save the project. If it saves correctly then you can close the project. also if it still hangs and you have a midi device plugged into the quad hit a key or something. I remember having trouble with usb midi when closing sonar and that was the "fix". Hope that helps.

 Thanks Tom, I'll try both later and see if that works!

get into the habit of saving your projects frequently as you work on them.  Do a save after adding a new track or a big edit or after doing anything you don't want to lose. 

I have a very stable X1 running on XP Pro and I get that same spinning "wheel of death" on rare occasions and it usually means I have to at the very least crash the program to get back to square one....on occasion the computer is locked up and a hard crash to recover is needed. I walked away one time and came back 15 minutes later to see it still spinning.... so when it happens the recovery is after a cold boot. 

Even if I can recover without a power cycle.... I still generally need to reboot to regain system stability. 

I don't think this is unique to X2, unless it happens every time. 

Just save the project on a regular basis and you have a quick recovery after the reboot without losing too much work.

Check your disk drives (CHKDSK) and memory (memtest) for errors. That may be what's causing your crashing. Also, if you're using 3rd party plug-ins, they may be causing the crashing. 

make sure your MIDI devices are OFF before trying to close.

I'm not sure what you mean? Physically turn off my keyboard for example.

Well it's not just me then. I've turned on auto save after 5 changes.

A hung process like that is obviously not intended behavior. Ultimately I'd troubleshoot what might be causing it to hang like that. Some quick tests I'd perform:

- Rule out whether or not it's project specific. If it's project specific, try launching the project in SAFE mode by launching SONAR first, then holding down the SHIFT key when loading the project. Disable all of your plugins and then see if it does the same thing when closing the project.
- If it's not project specific, is it hardware specific? What happens if you disconnect a particular device and then open & close your project. If it seems specific to a particular device, do you have the latest drivers & firmware for it? What about for your firewire/usb chipsets and/or motherboard? Have you tried connecting to a different port to see if you experience the same behavior?
- Perform some PC optimization for recording in general. Sweetwater actually has some very helpful articles on their website.
---The article that applies to Windows XP is at http://www.audioforums.co...ws-xp-optimization.php
---The article that applies to Windows Vista is at http://www.audioforums.co...vista-optimization.php
---The article that applies to Windows 7 is at http://www.sweetwater.com...Optimization_Guide.pdf

There are some different opinions in regards to some of the recommendations, but disabling start-up applications, unnecessary background services (such as anti-virus software), auto-update, power saving modes, etc. can really make a difference in the performance of your computer overall.

If you need to recover from a hang like that, try disconnecting/power cycling your audio and MIDI hardware. SONAR might not be able to quit the process completely because the drivers are holding on to it. If after re-launching SONAR the drivers are unavailable, you could go into Device Manager and disable and then re-enable the drivers for your device. This will force them to release any hung processes and make them available without having to restart.

  So I spent about 4 hrs. recording last night. Every time before I exited a project, per advice I got here, I clicked the stop audio engine icon. Every time the program closed without a hitch, not a hangup in sight. I almost hate stating this, cause you KNOW it'll start doing it again, now that I've said it, but so far, so good. I've lost count (in the hundreds)of times I've not been able to exit the program without a hangup and now, just by clicking a button it shuts down politely and behaves just like a great program should. Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to read my message and provide a very easy solution.