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Windows 7 is absolutely plug & play, with a lot more built in drivers and better USB support than XP. I have no idea why you might be having a problem with that.

Its very easy to set up Windows 7 to look like Win 2000/XP. Its probably pretty easy to do so with Windows 8.1 also, but I cant swear to that since I'm not using it yet. I still run XP on a few machines but only because they are just too old & slow for anything newer. In terms of security...

Real Player is a fossil. Another vote for VLC here. Although if you update the codecs in Media Player it works just fine.

I would use DVI. Video cards with HDMI outputs typically have their own sound cards for generating the audio. In an audio workstation you want to disable that audio, if you use the HDMI out the card may try to re-enable that audio and make it your default audio. Better to bypass all of that...

Actually this is more true now than it has been in a long time. For most modern PCs and laptops to run at full speed, the memory is split into two banks (aka duel channels) that must be identical. If they don't match, the machine runs in slower single-channel mode. Memory should always be a...

The moral of the story should be this: hard drives are cheap. If you want to play with a new OS, spend $50 on a new hard drive, take out your old one and set it aside. Put in your new one and install Windows 8 or Linux or wtf you want. Then when you ultimately decide you liked it better the...

Sorry I'm late to the party, I have not been in this section in awhile. I just want to make one comment: you are correct that 64 bit Windows 7 would not install if your CPU did not support it. However just because your Windows works with your CPU doesn't mean that all of your drivers are...

There's a lot of good advise in here. I just want to second one point: for a DAW system you are putting together today, you can get a fine system with either an Intel or AMD cpu.

Ah yes, a 'chicken or the egg' problem. The yellow marks mean the drivers for those devices are not loaded, or not working properly. You can click on them to get more detailed information. If you decide to keep XP you will need to find drivers for those devices. Many of them may be...

I don't know what sort of hardware Pro Tools wants, but your description would be a fine PC. And as for your original problem: Microsoft is still supporting XP, but not for much longer. However to download any XP updates from Microsoft you must have SP3 installed. You can download SP3 by...

I remember the TI-99 well, although I didn't have one. My first comp was a second hand Timex/Sinclair using a portable cassette as storage: Timex Sinclair 1000 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I pretty quickly discovered it was useless, and didn't get another computer until I could afford...

Good advice, but even better is to buy a drive imaging program (I use Symantec's Ghost) and back up ALL of your computers every few months. And keep your important data files backed up at all times. Rebuilding a PC means not just data & programs lost but a day or weekend lost, its worth it.

Dude, I've been working with PCs full time since the 1980s and that statement is complete BS. Just saying... :)

Your old computer is just fine for surfing the web. Update it (if you have not already) to SP3 and IE 8 and surf away. That way you can keep your new PC 'off the grid' and safe from viruses & such.

That's because newer PCs gain their speed primarily not by faster clock speed, but by having more cores. A duel core CPU is essentially two CPUs in one. So long as your PC is doing only one thing you might not see much difference between a newer CPU and your older P4. But as soon as it needs...

I am one of those folks. I used iTunes to rip my entire CD collection - it did a better job than any other program at correctly identifying the CDs and naming everything, including some VERY obscure CDs. But on two occasions when trying to play back files it did its best to screw up my...

Blue Sceens of Death can be caused by both software issues (viruses and malware) and hardware issues (drivers, bad RAM). However in my experience they are more often related to hardware & driver problems. Basic troubleshooting would be to remove as many devices and drive updates as...

I second all of this. When I built an MP3 server I did a lot of listening to decide what bitrate for MP3 had the best "quality / space ratio". I decided on 192 kbps. The sound is decent and the file size small, but you should really rip a favorite song of yours to a couple of different files...

Correct, Tweek UI is part of Windows Power Tools.

This is all correct. A CPU doesn't HAVE to be duel-core to run a 64 bit OS, it simply has to be 64 bit compatible. Pretty much every CPU sold over the last few years is. As was said, 32 bit versions of Windows can't access more than 3.5 gigs of RAM. However they have greater compatibility...