Do you have your sample libraries on a separate drive? You should be running at least 3 drives, keeping the OS/programs, wav files and sample libraries separated. BFD2 will certainly want it's sample library on a separate hd for best results. Don't know how much RAM you have either, so it's hard to say exactly what the problem might be.

12gb ram and yea all my synth/sample libraries are on a 2nd internal harddrive. OS and programs are on my main internal drive.

polarbear

Does anyone find that Drum synths are more prone to crashing than anything else?

...once in a while, Battery 3.

Not for me.  I have been using Battery 3 in almost every project for over 5 years and it has never caused Sonar to crash.  There are certainly some issues with Battery, but nothing to do with stability.  However, IK Multimedia's softsynths have been very unstable since moving from XP to W7-64.

Yea Battery like I said up there is the least problematic of my drum vsts. Just a couple times has it reported Battery as the cause, it's mostly Session Drummer followed by BFD2.

I'm taking a break from finishing these older songs, but as soon as I get back to it later this week (and get back to the crashing which is almost guaranteed at this point), I'll post some more details of the crashes.

id send it to cakewalk, they don't need your huge sample library's all they need is the crash info usually located in
%AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Logs.

right now its a guessing game.
 
what else might help are some specs on your system and your vst's (are they 32/64 ?) I know you said sonar was in 64 but is that all the synths as well ?

how do i find that folder with the logs? i'm not seeing anything like that or any logs folder under the cakewalk folders...

and yea i usually only even install the 64 bit version of a vst, whenever possible.

its in c/user/polarbear ??? /AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Logs

make sure you have Hidden folders checked in file preferences for win XP.
"you want to be able to see hidden folders"