After more than a week away from home I had planned to devote the day to getting the DAW up and running. Instead, I'll just have to start making music. After only minutes of preparation--IT WORKS.

Sound and video now play perfectly. I plugged in my M-Audio Keystation 49e MIDI controller keyboard; Reason's Autodetect picked it up immediately. All I had to do was create an instrument and I was playing MIDI.

For some reason the ASIO driver supplied with the Presonus AudioBox USB doesn't work. Reason 6 requires an ASIO driver to record audio. So I installed ASIO4ALL, selected it and held my breath. It works and appears to be stable. The acid test was plugging in an actual instrument, creating an Audio Track, and clicking Record. (I'd say "drum roll," but it was actually a bass. Ha, ha.)

My hat is off to technician David Newton and one of the assistant store managers at the Marietta, Georgia, Micro Center. David had the thing on his bench for seven days. During that time he substituted every major component in the system, including the case. We still have no idea what was wrong. Also during that time he communicated with me at least once a day by phone or e-mail. It was the best interaction I've ever had with a serviceperson.

At the end of day six, though, I went to the manager and explained that I could have bought the same system online for the same money, had it burned in for three days and shipped with a three-year warranty. Even though I was over the 30-day mark for returns he agreed to take everything back and issue a refund if it wasn't working to my satisfaction. I've been doing business with Micro Center for years; this just bolsters my already high opinion of them. Oh, and the only cost to me was their standard bench charge and the difference between the original and the new Gigabyte motherboard that David installed. I have no idea how many actual hours went into it.

Thanks again to everyone here for their input. Next step is to reinstall BIAB, Real Band, and other music-related apps and get to work. I am confident that my next questions will be purely practical matters of actual program use and music production.

"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."