Why won't this project open?

February 4, 2007 3:18 PM

When trying to open a large project in cakewalk sonar 5 producer edition, i encounter the error "Windows has encountered an error and must shut down." When i try to open a smaller project (under 800mb of ram) it opens without a hitch.

When i investigated the situation, task manager was showing that sonar was using 1.25gb of ram. This problem occurs when it's trying to open the east west quantum leap symphonic orchestra platinum edition. The projects in question exclusively use those plug-ins.

All of my software is up to date and so is sonar 5. my computer specs are: 420 gb hard drive space, pentium 4 prescott, 3.0 ghz processor, 2.5 gb ram, 4 gb swap file.

Is there anything I can do to get this project to open, short of getting a newer better computer?
Thanks for your help.

posted by amethysts to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Test for bad RAM
posted by niles at 3:30 PM on February 4, 2007

forgot to mention, i ran a memory test and it checked out fine.
posted by amethysts at 3:32 PM on February 4, 2007

Are you aware that a 4 GB swap file means that the total virtual memory available is 4 GB? It isn't 4GB + 2.5 GB; Windows doesn't do it that way. Try making the swap file bigger. (I'd offer instructions but it sounds like you already know how to do that.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 5:25 PM on February 4, 2007

well, the first thing you should do, i'd think, is to isolate it to a problem with the host program, the plugin or the maybe the project file. you should be able to disable the VST by just temporarily moving the vst out of your vst folder. then at least you'd know whose tech support / forums to bug.
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 7:56 AM on February 5, 2007

good ideas, thanks guys.
posted by amethysts at 7:29 PM on February 5, 2007