sonar drops out after playing loop twice!

[r0cker]

hi there , thanks for reading this. i have got an incredibly annoying problem with sonar. when i'm working i usually have a loop running in sonar so i can mute and bring in tracks and add midi notes etc while the track is playing to save having to rewind and play the loop all the time. anyway when i do this the loop will play twice without any problems and then near the end of the third time will dropout! i cannot understand this as surely if sonar can play a loop once through without dropping out the processing resources needed shouldn't be any greater to play it a second time(!) this occurs even when i do not make any changes to anything, i just press play and it get 2 repeats and the third time it messes up. the disk and cpu meters are pretty low below 30% so i do not think it is a resources problem and i have tried all of the options suggested in troubleshooting for droupouts in the help section to no avail.
my system spec is:

800mhz athlon
256mb ram
turtle beach pinnacle
kt7 raid mobo

if anyone has solved a similar problem or has any ideas as how to solve this i would be really appreciative as this problem is really slowing me down and is very frustrating!
many thanks in advance for any help,
cheers,
r0cker

[manchild]

Sonar loops are GREAT!! do you have your loop markers set?
also try copy and paste for the amount of measures you want
to play too. to do this right click in the sample loop copy then go to the next measure and right click and paste after that it will ask you how many measures you want the sample play, you then just put in the amount of measures and click ok! Also check check your DMA settings indevice Maneger and make sure it says DMA
also with using loops and a musical instrument you do not need to use 24/96 audio setting try 20or 18 bit setting. and last thing
I have found that 256 MB of Ram is good but Sonar is a Ram HOG!
get some more Ram and take it up another 128, if your system
will allow. that's my 4 cents

[r0cker]

thanks very much reply manchild, i have checked and all my hard drives have dma enabled. i am not too sure if it is a ram problem as well as the loop will play twice before it drops out and i guess it takes as much ram to play the loop the first time as the third! the loop markers seem to be set ok too. i am gonna reinstall and see if that solves it but i think it didnt do any good last time!
oh well, if anyone has any suggestions as to what it might be i would be very grateful.
thanks again,
r0cker