Dana Moore

Guy was trying to help me.  Last bit of that conversation was between him and me.  Your opinions are noted.   Jeremy Oakes -  I had a rough 48 hours.  It's all under control now, and I'm building back slowly.  You found my reasoning ridiculous.  You laughed at my frustrations.  Is that what kind of person you are?

John Vere - Same.  As it was, Platinum was fine - but I have to believe marketing rigged up this scheme to charge us twice for something that already belonged to us.  Bottom line imo - they messin' with our property.  

Thank you all for responding to this.  The problem had to have been graphics, and it reared its ugly head about 12 hours before my Verizon Personal Hotspot got throttled down to land-line speeds.  I've got one of Jim Roseberry's DAWs with 4 hard drives, and I know my project files would survive, so I was forced into a situation where I had to do a Windows 10 Reset overnight, and it took the entire night to get it done.

Some of the things that may or may not be players:

1)  I'm using the intel graphics option, but I've also got a GeForce 960 card installed that I don't use.  It's disabled in Device Manager.  

2)  Before I decided on a reset, I installed the Sonar Platinum doppleganger, Cakewalk Sonar Bandlab ( or whatever they call it now), and it seemed to work like a charm.  But I wasn't totally satisfied with it - so I kept working with Cakewalk Command Center to roll back my Platinum updates.  At some point I had a solution, but something about the graphics performance prompted me to restart the computer, and that's when the black screen of death showed up.

3)  At various times, I would see this banner representing some free graphics program, RAD, - it would come and go - I assumed it was some component of the Intel graphics feature - but now I want to find it and delete it.  Maybe it's malware, idk, but it's not listed in my programs.  My priority has been to get back my ability to work the computer, and I've got that now - I just have to begin the process of rebuilding the software environment for full operation.  I'll go after it at some point here in the next few days, but right now I'm busy building back Platinum, with the throttled-down  speed I've got until the end of the month.  Then I've got all the Native Instruments and IK vst's to reinstall.  Then we'll see about producing some new music again. 

4)  I should mention it here, that I've been a Cakewalk user since it first came out in the 90's.  It quickly became Twelve-Tone Systems, and everything was fine - it was still Cakewalk, then it was Sonar - still no problems.  I found a user community online, hosted by Cakewalk, where I could go and talk technical issues, musical issues, and just about anything else.  The problem came when the new owners seemingly obfuscated the whole issue of product support and community forum.  IMO.  Here's how I see the business ethics side of Cakewalk now:   - You hire a limo to take you to the prom.  Halfway there, another limo pulls up in the next lane and says, "Dive in through the window - we're here to get you there, and your current limo has been sold and is no longer an option, but we're still Acme Limos, so the ride is free."..Then, miles down the highway, the original shows up next to you.  "Jump in through the window, but you have to leave your friends behind - trust us.  It's a great ride, but,er, you're going to have to pay for it again."  IMO, this is what's been happening to Cakewalk support for original products, specifically Sonar.  I really like Sonar and don't plan to swap over to any Bandlab or other such hybrid deal.  But I've paid my dues, and I don't like to be jerked around, and therein lies the problem.  We bought in early and used the features and had a functional support system.  But our national investment into big business laws and ethics has been on behalf of corporate profit.  Now they want to sell us a workable system that we originally bought, for $14.99 a month or some ****.

5)  There must be hundreds of Sonar users like me, who have come to rely on it, only to be told, "We're swapping limo's - Make the jump - be very careful and have your wallets open."  There is a current atmosphere in Consumer America that has Bait and Switch written all over it.  The trust is gone.  I'm sticking with Sonar based upon the belief that I can navigate the problem and get back on the road to producing music.  If they don't get their business plan together and it all falls apart, then I start to consider Pro Tools and Propellerheads and Cubase.  6) Again, thank you, and I hope to be able to give you an update in about a month.  If this is the Community Forum I need to be part of, then I'm glad to have finally found the right one.  

I'm using a 27" screen.  All my other programs are running in the right resolution.  Something I did must have triggered it to go into this higher resolution.  Mighta been when I was messin with mp4 video files and their codecs.  

I did end up installing Cakewalk by Bandlab, and I essentially get exactly what I had in Sonar Platinum, but I can already see some probs I'll have to clear up with vst's like amplitube 5 - the graphics resolution is correct in this program, so I'll prolly end up using it instead.  I prefer Sonar, so I'll continue trying to roll back, also to look for problems communicating between Windows 10 and Sonar over graphic resolution.  

Thanks for the good poop yo Wolf - I'll let ya know.  😎

I use Sonar Platinum.

My Windows graphics is set at 175% - Yesterday I was trying to create a 5-min video WMV and MP4 with one of my own audio files.

The end result was that at some point the Sonar Platinum graphics setting became so high that I can barely see the text, even with my reading glasses.  Something happened to the graphics settings that I can't reverse.  I tried system recovery and it failed - for the first time ever.  Tried clean re-install - and it doesn't respond to Windows graphics when I change the resolution there.

I've been using Cakewalk since it came out in the early 90's and have now run into a situation where I'm not even sure I'm in the right product community.

Should I download and install BandLab?