Crashes loading plugins

I'm having problems with my new DAW
Windows 7 64 bit - Sonar 8.5 32 bit (No updates)- Intel I5 750 - 4Gb Ram
 
Sonar sometimes crashes when loading soft synths - BFD2, True Pianos etc
Sometimes the screen goes grey before it tells me sonar.exe has failed
Its inconsistent but frequently fails. If I've managed to install one synth - save my work and try to install another, if it fails when I go back in my changes havent been saved
 
Help would be much appreciated, I've spent days on this, I'm wondering whether I should have stuck with XP
 
Things I've wondered -
Do the sonar updates fix things like this ?
Is there some UAC issue here
Could it be dodgy RAM
 
Once again thanks in advance
 
 
 
 
 

Thanks CJ
I'm downloading 8.5.2 now. I probably wont get to try it tonight, I'm in the UK and its getting late

I hope I have a better day with it tomorrow

Ive loaded 8.5.2. 
Inserted True Pianos - no problem, plays fine
Inserted BFD2 and then tried to load a kit, it wouldnt - then later the screen went grey and I got the message :-

SONARPDR.EXE is not responding                Message previously before patch was SONAR.EXE I'm sure

My soundcard is  a Presonus Firepod (FP10) supposed to be a good 64 bit driver
I dont think BFD officially support 64 bit but there seem to be a lot of users who are happy with it

I just re-opened the same file and inserted BFD no problem, saved it and closed it. When I opened it up again it was still there but no associated audio track

Just repeated the whole process again and BFD wont load a kit
True Pianos does seem OK though now

CJ
Thanks for sticking with this, I appreciate your help.

I took a look in BFD2 and the bridge options are greyed out

Although I'm using Windows 7 64 bit, I have Sonar 32 bit loaded currently - I tried 64 bit previously but couldnt get it to work.. so tried 32
Would this explain why bridge is greyed out ?

I have my VSTs loaded on a seperate 3rd hard drive, I'm wondering whether there could be a problem with the drive. I could try loading BFD on an external drive when I've got  a couple of hours to spare.

When it all works it sounds great and no noticeable latency - using Roland TD3 into BFD2 in Sonar, but it fails more often than it works

Check your ram with a good memory checker. Make sure it is good.

John

Thanks for that, I think theres a mem test facility on my ASUS board, I'll investigate and give it a go

John


Check your ram with a good memory checker. Make sure it is good.

Ran memtest overnight: 9 Passes, 0 errors. Not the ram. Just curious - why is everyone always so quick as to blame the poor old ram? I have never had a bad stick in over 20 yrs of self builds. Is faulty ram really that common?
 
Thanks anyway
 

John


Check your ram with a good memory checker. Make sure it is good.

Looks like you were in the right ball park after all... I've narrowed my problem down to a memory leak!
 
I spent today monitoring everything whilst I worked - temps, Cpu use and memory, and I noticed that just before Sonar locked up, The process sonarpdr.exe was using around 3.7 gig of memory. At this stage Sonar's main arrange window becomes totally unresponsive, (although the mixer and synth racks still function) I am unable to exit Sonar and any attempt to kill the process results in a crash followed by spontaneous reboot.
 
In my case Truepianos and NI GR4 were just acting as big straws that were inevitably breaking the camels back. Mesatele - try monitoring your Memory usage - maybe BFD is pushing you over the edge too. I would imagine with a name like BFD, the ram use is going to be suitably chunky.
 
Thing is - what now? In the last few weeks I have purposefully limited myself to Cakewalk only plugs just to make sure that it wasnt an incompatibility with some 3rd party vsts. The project I was working on today contained only the following:
 
12x RXP player
2x Dropzone
8x Channel tools
4x Boost 11
5x Sonitus EQ (built in)
4x Sonitus Delay
2x Sonitus reverbs (1 on bus)
1x Sonitus compressor (with sidechain inputs)
 
SO I guess the next question is - has anyone seen any memory leak issues with any of the above running 32bit in a 64bit OS? My money is on RXP player - Its the reason I cant run 64bit Sonar and the bane of my existence. Although both sonitus delays and reverb are still just as buggy as when they were first released so I'm not ruling those out.
 

I'm not sure whether its fixed for me now

I re-loaded the latest BFD2 update for a second time and since then I have managed to load BFD kits in Sonar on ten consecutive occasions without crashes , tho I've not had time to test it properly and am cautious to say its fixed

however the downside is :-

since doing this, BFD2 standalone crashes every time I try to load a kit.

I'm not so bothered about this tho as the whole reason for building a new DAW was so that I could record from an e-drum kit into Sonar without latency problems. Its very strange though.

I've tried asking for help on the fxpansion forum but got no reply

I'm going to do that memory check when I get time and try that new driver from Presonus
Thanks to everyone here. I'll let you know if it works