The new machine is here the new machine is here.... now what?

[wfws]

I just received my fancy new i7 2600K with 8gb ram and Windows 7 64bit. Its going to be for audio only, and I'll be migrating my existing software onto this machine.
My questions are about how to do that.
I will be using Reason/Record 1.0, and Ableton Live Suite 8.2, with my Presonus Firepod. What order should I install in, or does it matter?

I also am looking for some good info on how to tweak settings to make Windows 7 perform as well as it can for a home studio.

Finally, does anyone have any experience installing a FirePod on Windows 7 64 bit? I'm not liking it much on my duocore laptop- its full of pops and clicks. I'll need to make sure I do the install correctly, and hopefully head off some of these problems.

Thanks in advance for your intelligent answers.

WFWS

 

[shutupandshave]

I dont have any experience with the FirePod, however the order of software installation shouldn't matter. My advice is (if you have the room), create an image of your hard disk, and then start getting it all installed and running. If it works fine, first time (which is entirely impossible with windows 7) then great. If not you can use your image to roll back to a pre-installation state and start tweaking.

 

[RWhite]

Install order should not matter. And making a backup image - several actually, one before you install all your music software and one after - is EXCELLENT advise.

 

[GeoffryMcDonald]

Install order should not matter. And making a backup image - several actually, one before you install all your music software and one after - is EXCELLENT advise.

Yeah, Install order won't matter in the least. And ALWAYS back up your drives as often as possible. I back up mine at the very least once a day, and sometimes more than that. It's good practice in anything no matter whether it's Audio related or not.