A curious little Sonar 1.3.1 bug.

[Jim Y]

I wonder if anyone else gets this? If I close Sonar with a track in record mode, it crashes. XP tells me it has a problem and has been closed down although it leaves the midi indicator in the sys tray. Restarting Sonar and closing again clears the indicator from the tray. Not really a problem because I don't lose any data (athough I would if I didn't save after every record - old habit) and it doesn't crash any other time. Curious though. It did the same under Win2k but never under 98SE. I suspect it's because Sonar disables disk caching and holds a file open for record armed tracks. Does anyone enable the read and write caching? - Sonar 1x disables it by default, what does Sonar 2 do? I also have my drives write caching disabled in hardware properties - I've seen it as a recommended tweak and I agree with the reason for it but what does anyone else think?

[mixsit]

I often shut down with my external effects chanels still record-armed (input monitoring is always on on them also). It's not causing any problem that I know of. I get the occasional 'Sonar had a problem' error that takes me back to the previous closed project upon re-opening, but that can also happen in mid project, so it's probably something else again.
Sonor 2xl, win xp pro...
Wayne

[Jim Y]

I have had some close downs in the past which I put down to a clunky install so I was surprised to see it happen after a totally clean, by-the-book installation. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with a file not being closed properly. It can also happen if I record some tracks in a new project and disarm them without first saving. I can get the recordings back because they are in the Audio data folder (thanks, I think, to having Write caching disabled). The moment the last track has its red "R" clicked to disarm - Boom "The Program Sonar.exe has...." Once a project is under way and contains recordings from a previous session - it never crashes - it's just the initial recording. It occurs tome that as the majority of Sonar users seem to start projects with an arrangement of Groove clips, they may never see this bug.
If it can still happen in Sonar2 (another reason NOT to upgrade) then it looks like an e-mail to tech support is in order.

[Aaron Cheney]

I've encountered a very similar problem. I often get the stupid XP "problem reporter" window on close. I hadn't been able to link it back to any set of circumstances yet though. I'll have to see if it's linked to a track being armed. Very interesting....

I also save VERY frequently during a session, and sometimes after one of those mid-session saves it will crash unexplainedly. I'll have to watch again to see if a track is armed.

Interestingly, I've never lost data on one of these crashes. I open up the file again and everything is there. Hmm...

Aaron
http://www.voodoovibe.com