Craigs' my man; guess he's 'round the bend as one of the longest lasting experts on the www 'bout recording ... i have my zamzung (yeah, that's a S Korean brand too) monitor driven by an MS general PnP monitor driver, works fine that way ...

But i am curious, i do have a High Definition Audio Device DISABLED driver under Sound, video and game controllers. The (realtek?) audio chip has been disabled in my ASUS Bios' settings, but the frigging disabled driver keeps popping up & bothering me ... - F

PS: craig tips
Here I disagree with Craig on having windows update taking care of things; i turn it off in services, and i bought 360 Total security ('Patch Up' function) especially since it handles the necessary updates only OK, and leave all the b*sh*t thrown upon us from MS alone, even their free version does that.

Got one more tip: Privacyfirewall does all what you need, completely configurable like the old Zonealarm or Comodo firewalls were in them old days, before they started installing bloatware along with them.