Commiserations Blisco, you have more or less the same setup as I do. Most of my early problems were with the X-Fi soundcard. Which one do you have? I hope not X-Fi Xtreme Audio, which really is not an X-Fi card, although they do at least have a Vista driver for it now. I gave up on it and replaced it with the Xtreme Gamer.

Make sure you are using the latest driver from Creative - Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series driver 2.18.0013 for my Xtreme Gamer - although they have been promising an update forever to cure some outstanding problems.

Here is the list of Vista driver availabilities:

http://support.creative.com/KB/showarticle.aspx?sid=14186&h=13

If you are into realtracks and why wouldn't you be, I recommend the Forte DXi. I don't think anything else is functional.

Jazzman helped me through most of my problems but he has more confidence in Creative than I do.

Yes, you have to turn off the User Account control but I am not sure that 32-bit compatibility mode is necessary. And one should not have to, anyway!

My system is operating well these days but I think I am going to raid the piggy bank and get Windows 7.

Grah Jive Talk
"Don't worry baby, they'll swing their arses off."