Eki

41 minutes ago, John Vere said:

I will almost guarantee you that it is a plug in. I just spent about a week sorting this out.

I just built a new computer so moving from W10 to W11

It’s bad that Cakewalk is so picky about plug ins but it seems to be the case. 
For me it was a combination of putting certain plug ins in the exact same folders as they were on the computer the project originated from. 
I also tried only installing VST3 version when available and that was a mistake.
So I had to uninstall and reinstall the ones that were crashing Cakewalk. 
You have to open in Safe mode to sort this out. 

Once I got it stable enough projects would open with a list of missing plug ins. 
They actually were installed and listed but location different. So you select the bracketed plug in and choose replace and re select it.
 

Only bummer is you loose the settings. You need to go back to original computer and write them down. 
Then there’s some plug ins that W11 doesn’t like and Cakewalk can’t even scan them. Turn off auto scan and see if Cakewalk loads faster. 
For me one was Focusrite Midnight Compressor. Lounge Lizard is also not working on most projects. 
I never had this problem in the past as I have 3 W10 computers and 2 computers with W7. And it wasn’t CbB because same projects crashed Sonar Platinum. 

Many thanks for rapid response, I'll explore ...

In my older win10 laptop it works ok, but when I installed it my new win11 laptop something went/goes wrong. It seems like starting OK, but then it stops loading. After a while it loads the project, but I cannot play it. The cursor keeps spinning indefinitely indicating supposely some process all the time. In Taskmanager I see, that Cakewalk takes more and more of the memory all the time. Reinstall does not help. Funny thing is that the Sonar X3 PE works ok still! Some hints or ideas are welcome. I have none left.

Erkki Ranta
 

Steinberg UR 12 is about 100 dollars. but it has only one input. I have had  with good experiense Steinberg UR22, which cost a bit more but has 2 inputs.

I had the same problem in my desktop machine after formatting and reinstalling Sonar X3 PE and CWbB.   Windows Event Viewer showed that the cause of crashing was  in path C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Vstplugins\BREVERB SONAR\BREVERB 2 Cakewalk-64.dll.  It's date was 28.11.2012, size 5544 kb.

Luckily I had in my laptop wellfunctioning CWbB, and I digged from there the same named plugin file dated 8.11.2018, size 5947 kb to replace the file. And Voila! No crashes anymore. I just don't know what I would have done if I didn't have my laptop as reserve... 

Where one would get replacing Breverb 2 plugin  - except from Overloud, costing 89 dollars?

Erkki Ranta

I wrestled with problem havin no sounds in windows, when CbB was active.  The solution was to put the loopback switch  on in the interface (like  John Vere referred), and in CW preferences check the "Suspend  Audio Engine when Cakewalk is not in focus".

Earlier I had Steinberg UR22 Mk II with no loopback knob. The loopback was executable in the driver software.

Btw, in recording the loopback must be off if you don't want everything  what you hear to the track.