Installed Bandlab Cakewalk Big Mistake

[desertbluesman]

I installed Bandlabs Cakewalk on my computer yesterday. It took over all of my cakewalk folders changed the way all of my Sonar Versions see the file associations. I started up my Sonar 8.5.3 after the install and somehow I could not find any of my hundreds of projects from within any of my old Sonar Installs. So I uninstalled everything from the computer and installed Sonar 8.5.3 again and it will not open any of my old projects.  Fortunately for me I have 3 different backups never hooked to that computer. Even though the files were Cakewalk standard file extensions my sonar would not open any of them. Plus my anti virus told me there was a tracking cookie revealing all of my personal info as it was installing Bandlabs Cakewalk. Sad day for me, although nothing was lost except the time spent installing all that software and loading all of my folders onto the drives. Now I probably have to wipe the drive on that computer and start fresh, something I really do not want to do if I want to use it for DAW purposes.

[desertbluesman]

Plus it changed the look of how my 8.5.3 saw the files to Bandlabs version of the interface even though I was trying to reopen them in 8.5.3.?

[bitflipper]

Whoa, you're thinking of wiping the drive because some file associations got changed?  Yikes! No need to make more work for yourself.

The file association changes actually make sense because you now have two applications that can read the same files - so you have to choose one. If you'd installed a better text editor than Notepad, you'd expect it to open .txt files, right? But you always have the option of changing the file associations back if you'd rather 8.5 be your default DAW. 

8.5 and CbB can happily coexist, each with their own file locations. But one or the other must be designated as the one that wakes up when you double-click on a project file. 

 

[Bapu]

13 hours ago, bitflipper said:

8.5 and CbB can happily coexist, each with their own file locations. But one or the other must be designated as the one that wakes up when you double-click on a project file. 

 

And you can *always* use the File->Open menu bar in the non-designated version to open an old project.

 

It's not as bad as you think it is if you take the time to understand what is really going on. It's not a mistake/disaster what happened, it's how Windows works. 

[desertbluesman]

I was just out in my office copying files onto an external Hard Drive. The reinstall files are on a separate partition on the hard drive inside the computer. I have been wanting to reinstall for a year or so, because the boot time was getting longer and longer. Now it is time, I've done this before on many computers in the past. (I did check the bit rate inside Sonar and in my USB interface and they were OK) I think it is because after I uninstalled all the DAW apps, I did go in and do a regedit to delete any Bandlab and Sonar stuff, that is probably also part of the problem. If worse comes to worse I will buy another computer.

This stuff gives me a lot to do in the next several days. Generally I am bored stiff some days (I am retired) This is an adventure not a big problem. Thanks for the help amigo.

[iRelevant]

Just a note. I ran into trouble with my previous 32-bit Sonars when installing the x64 Version. It was a fairly simple fix. But just to know, 32- and x64 bit versions don't happily co-exist on the same system. IIRC something about file paths getting confused and some quick registry/settings fix.