The PC is a P4 2.8gHz. So it's aged but not ancient. The soundcard is M-Audio Audiophile 2496. There is no real reason why it shouldn't work. But even playing an mp3 is full of pops and glitches.
Ironically, a friend of mine who I helped set up a little recording station has the exact same PC, except it's a P3. Everything else is identical. Acquired from the same place. Same soundcard installed in the same slot. (The only slot) His is running Win7 flawlessly. But there's no shared IRQ on that machine.
7 runs nicely on my machine but the audio doesn't like it. I don't want to change soundcard yet. I like my 2496. I've had it for over 10 yrs and it's never given me a reason to quit. I had a US800 for a while, primarily for recording drums (now sold) but I always prefered my preamps into the 2496.
And.....if it ain't broke.
Ah! Now, when I got my first W7/64 PC, an HP, AMD 2 core 2.7G and moved my trusty 2496 out of the P4 3G XP machine, it gave me all sorts of grief. After a period of intense panic I downloaded the drivers afresh from M-Audio this time on the actual W7 machine since previously I had dldd them on the P4 and "sticked" them across.
That fixed it and the machine has been running Samplitude, Reaper, Cubase le6 and others beeeoootifully ever since.
I now have two more 2496 cards installed in this Asus home build and they work like a wood burning stove.
Dave.