Thank you Paul and Jason. Yes, I've been debating upgrading to Sonar Producer for some time now. I have the demo. But I've also been been fooling around with Reaper. What intrigues me there is that they are in the process of implementing a notation editor, which will be far more advanced than Sonar's. Also, they are working on a Linux build. Amazing developers they have there.
The good news is that, by not shutting my computer down, I can load my project quickly, even when closed.
Another issue solved, maybe by updating the player: the instruments no longer lag behind my other ones.
With respect to the crashes, I won't be doing anything to cause that for awhile. It only happens when I consolidate a project, before exporting to Notion. If it still happens, I know how to handle it. I first delete the instruments from the player, then I can safely delete the synth. But it will be awhile before I'm at that stage with my current project.
My system is an i7, 16 GB Ram (max=32). Two WD Black 1TB HDD's. Windows 7 Pro.
All in all, things are much better. I don't know why I let myself get so frazzled. The problems are solvable. I should have asked for help instead of blowing off steam. Won't happen again.