Hi Jazzman!

If there were an award for lurking, I'm sure I'd be a contender! This was the first chance I had to make a contribution to the forum. I hope my solution works for the OP.

My HP laptop originally came with a dual core AMD Turion 64, 3 GB of memory and 32-bit Vista. I was able to run not only BIAB and RealBand, but PowerTracks and (lately) Reaper. About two months ago I wiped the hard drive and installed a year-old copy of Windows 7. I also increased the memory to the maximum 4 GB. For several weeks all of the programs worked properly. And BIAB still does, except that I can't render anything within the program.

I don't know if the soundcard is any good for recording because I'm a step-entry guy. I use Finale PrintMusic, or even the Piano Roll to enter MIDI melody lines and then flesh out the arrangements in BIAB. It worked really well in the XP days (only 4 years ago) when I created an entire Christmas album of songs with a single melody line backed up by BIAB.

And speaking of outboard soundcards... Six years ago I had a laptop with a PCMCIA slot into which I was able to plug a Creative Audigy ZS Notebook card. It worked like a charm, had its own ASIO drivers and even had a built-in soundfont player. Unfortunately, technological advancement and real progress often don't go together!