Resolution: Startup crashes with latest Sonar release

[Noel Borthwick]

Its literally explained in the first post on this thread. 
Generally if running the latest redist installer didn't resolve your issue then you have some other issue. Are you using an ASIO driver like ASIO4All or a variant of that? If so that is likely the cause for your hang.

[ZincT]

Thanks @Noel Borthwick Noel - this was my problem and it is fixed now. 👍🏻

In case anyone else has this, I noticed it was when I removed the older 2008 VC++ redists that the problem went away.
I also noticed a couple of the uninstallers for the 2008 redists were in Russian, possibly installed by Ilya Efimov libraries IDK.

Anyway, Sonar is now running 😃

EDIT: Scrub that, it's gone back to exiting when I click the "continue evaluation" button. 😕

In more detail, here's what happens...

- I double click on Sonar icon and see the startup/loading window

- Next I momentarily see the Sonar UI flash up which then disappears, leaving the "continue evaluation" window displayed

- I wait 15 seconds and then click "continue evaluation" which then exits and leaves nothing running

I don't see why it would run once after I had removed all VC++ Redists and Re-installed (via Sonar installation), but not run again afterwards?

I'm not running ASIO4All or similar and I have also removed the Steinberg Generic ASIO drivers which seem to keep getting installed.  

Here are the VC++ Redists that are currently installed..

Edited Wednesday at 11:54 AM by ZincT

[Noel Borthwick]

This is unlikely to be a redist issue. The membership screen should always be shown only when the app is visible in the background. Start a new thread and attach a video to show the problem.

[ZincT]

2 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

This is unlikely to be a redist issue. The membership screen should always be shown only when the app is visible in the background. Start a new thread and attach a video to show the problem.

Okay, thanks Noel. 

I have started a new thread here.

[Michael Stolze-Hölzber]

As a professional software developer with over 30 years of experience, I’m honestly stunned by the current state of Cakewalk Sonar’s ASIO implementation.

I’ve tested the latest version of Sonar on a clean system, with all third-party VSTs removed from their default paths to eliminate plugin-related interference. Despite this, the application consistently crashes or disappears as soon as I attempt to switch to any ASIO driver — including well-maintained ones from major vendors and even ASIO4ALL, which used to work flawlessly for years.

In some configurations, simply selecting an audio driver leads to an immediate Blue Screen of Death — something that should never happen in any user-mode application, let alone in a production-grade DAW.

Most concerning, however, is this: Sonar's current installer actively reinstalls the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable, specifically version 8.0.59192. This happens even if you’ve already removed older runtime versions and have the latest 2015–2022 VC++ redistributables installed. If the software is so dependent on a 20-year-old runtime that it reintroduces it silently, then something is very wrong with the deployment model.

Telling users to "just uninstall all old redistributables" while your own installer injects legacy binaries back into the system — potentially destabilizing audio subsystems — is not a viable support strategy.

I strongly suggest the development team revisit the runtime dependencies and ASIO handling logic. What you have now may technically boot up on some machines, but from a system integrity and reliability perspective, it's broken — and that’s putting it politely.

[Colin Nicholls]

3 hours ago, Michael Stolze-Hölzber said:

As a professional software developer with over 30 years of experience,

Welcome to the forum. It sucks you're experiencing the behavior you describe. It's definitely not typical. I hope you get to the bottom of it.