Try changing your sound card to 44100 instead of 48000 and see if that helps. If not, try changing from 24 bit to 16 bit (at 44100).
Also, I've had good luck running one of my computers with a Realtek using the free ASIO4ALL driver (you can Google it). That will give you low latency for MIDI input recording.
Just a few things to try.
Hi Jford, thanks for your suggestions. I did try changing those soundcard settings as you suggested, but unfortunately it didn't seem to help playback, and then after rebooting my computer Windows changed them back again.
I probably won't be using Midi input into this old laptop, but I will on my new one, so I will give ASIO4ALL a look.
Thanks again

Zac