We've been running Power Tracks for the the last ten years and with ASIO drivers for much of that time. Even on the low-spec machines we've had no problems whatsoever and if you want to play soft synths in real time, you NEED ASIO.

There are so many possible variations and driver conflicts, you may need to experiment to find a system which is stable, but when you do you should keep it well away from the internet, or at the very least, disable automatic up-dates on the operating system. That way the machine is the same every time you switch it on.

For my money, the best operating system for music is still XP-PRO with SP2. OK, it's only 32 bit, but at least it works. I speak from experience - our machines run 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

ROG.