I think there are three factors at work here. Ms made two changes in the Dec13 that directly affect us - a change in timing that exposed old cw code that needs to be  updated - and a change in the way windows communicates with audio drivers. 
 
Three weeks ago I could play an mp3 or mp4 in Vlc. Didn't matter what sample rate the adapter was set to at the time, it reset the adapter to the clip's rate, played the clip, then reset the adapter to what it was on exit. Now, if the adapter is not set correctly for the clip, I get no audio. I can pause playback, open the adapter control panel, reset it, return to vlc and unpause, now I have audio. 
 
I know there is a driver issue because vegas has crashed frequently lately, and when I close the crash window, I see the speaker icon with a red line through it saying no audio device available. In the middle of a video session. If I uninstall the reinstall the audio driver alls well for a while… 
 
I've also seen on other forums that ms uninstalls legacy 1394 firewire drivers as part of updates. I now keep the legacy 1394 driver on the desktop to reinstall whenever ms has removed it… 
 
I was going to update my m-audio firewire 1814 to an m-audio express after the holiday. Now I'll wait until cw chimes in again. 

gmp

microapp

gmp
Well my experiment with disabling Defender and Adobe Acrobat Reader didn't solve the problem. There's still something from the internet that's updating and causing the runtime error.
 
I've looked into MS forced updates in Win 10 and it appears that this doesn't really apply to me. So far it appears to me that since I'm actually disabling Win Updates in Services that this prevents MS from updating my computer. I'd like to hear from bitflipper to see if he still feels this way.
 
But my Google search with lawsuits and such was referring to MS forcing Win 7+8 users to update to Win 10 and Win 10 home users who are not able to disable Win Updates like I'm able to. I have Win 10 Pro. I'm still looking into this, but so far I'm still baffled why I'm getting some mysterious internet update that’s gone haywire.

Defender is updated via Windows update so if you disable the update service, Defender will not update nor will anything else Windows related.
Acrobat reader has its own updater.
Have you disabled everything you can regarding Windows phoning home? You can get rid of most of it.
I am sure you know the following but I have to ask anyway .
Do you reboot your PC or stop the service after disabling the update service. It can be disabled but still running.

I'd like to know how to disable all the Windows phoning home stuff. Can you explain please.
 
Every night I turn off my PC, I leave Win Updates service disabled always, except right before I install a new Plat version. Then I enable it and get all the updates done. Many times when I disable any service I'll usually also hit stop, but maybe not always. After I update Plat, I make a new image file.
 
I have some other settings for autoupdates for when it is enabled. I always get a popup message saying there are Win updates available and if I'd like to download and install them. So to my knowledge MS will never update anything without my permission.

Gerry,
Take a look here about phoning home.
http://www.howtogeek.com/224616/30-ways-windows-10-phones-home/
 
You mention Google. If you have ANY Google product (Google earth,calendar,etc) you will see a googleupdate service running. You can disable it but I find it will usually create another instance. Also the Firefox browser connects to a Google IP address and I am unable to stop that since it is built in . I assume Chrome will do the same.
I would disable Sonar phoning home (analytics) as well but this has nothing to do with updates.
I think the new Sonar start menu also phones home...again irrelevant to updates.

dlion16
I think there are three factors at work here. Ms made two changes in the Dec13 that directly affect us - a change in timing that exposed old cw code that needs to be  updated - and a change in the way windows communicates with audio drivers. 
 
Three weeks ago I could play an mp3 or mp4 in Vlc. Didn't matter what sample rate the adapter was set to at the time, it reset the adapter to the clip's rate, played the clip, then reset the adapter to what it was on exit. Now, if the adapter is not set correctly for the clip, I get no audio. I can pause playback, open the adapter control panel, reset it, return to vlc and unpause, now I have audio. 
 
I know there is a driver issue because vegas has crashed frequently lately, and when I close the crash window, I see the speaker icon with a red line through it saying no audio device available. In the middle of a video session. If I uninstall the reinstall the audio driver alls well for a while… 
 
I've also seen on other forums that ms uninstalls legacy 1394 firewire drivers as part of updates. I now keep the legacy 1394 driver on the desktop to reinstall whenever ms has removed it… 
 
I was going to update my m-audio firewire 1814 to an m-audio express after the holiday. Now I'll wait until cw chimes in again. 

I have not yet seen WU revert to non-legacy 1394 drivers but I will certainly check this out. My FW-1884 latency is awful w/o the legacy drivers and it is something that may go unnoticed unless a problem occurs.
I am worried they may drop the legacy(kernel-mode) firewire driver all together. If that happems, it is new interface time.

what i'm saying re:firewire is that the death knell is already sounding. they delete the legacy 1394 driver and change the way the firewire audio driver works.
 
i'm ready for a new interface, i'm looking at the motu audio express. i'd hate to buy a new interface and face the same issues. so i'll wait until the cw side of the equation has stabilized...

Here is an update on my instability issues that began after some Windows 10 update, not sure which one. First some relevant facts:
 
ASUS Sabertooth x58 mobo - crux of the problem.
Saffire Pro 14
SSD, a bunch of HDDs.
Core i7-950 @ 4Ghz, 24Gb RAM.
 
This motherboard shipped with two different controllers for hard drives - 4 ports by Intel at 3Gb/s, 2 ports by Marvell at 6Gb/s.  These two ports' driver was the poison. After running LatencyMon I found the Marvell 91xx driver (which had my DAW's SSD on it) was causing all sorts of problems and latency. So I switched the SSD containing Sonar to an Intel port, and *SPARKLES* problems gone (for now.)  I just worked for an hour and a half straight with no crashes or audio dropouts.  I haven't been able to do this for over a month. So happy now!
 
Admins, maybe put this post somewhere more appropriate?  A topic for compatibility issues that get solved maybe..
 

Well everyone, especially abacab, there has been a big development today. All of a sudden with me not doing anything, I'm not getting any more runtime errors. In disbelief, I've rebooted several times, double clicked a CWP file and it all opens fine, no runtmie error.
 
What is going on? Is it Cakewalk or MS or some mystery player?  I stopped all testing on monday, reverted back to my working image file and just worked as normal, getting runtime errors a few times just to check it, then today it's all changed.
 
I'd love to get an explanation from either Cakewalk or MS or whoever? Keep in mind I'm one of those just using 2016.09, never have even tried 2016.11 and reverted back to my 10/23 image several times. Has anyone else noticed any improvements?

Sonar crashes when I close a project if during the session I added and or removed any UAD plug-ins.

Make sure you check the OP for an update that includes a couple of possible work-arounds

This ...
 
12/20 Update:
 
http://forum.cakewalk.com...-updates-m3526221.aspx

Thanks Lance!! Much appreciated.