Audio Engineering society/something something and sony phillips digital interface. Those are just 2 different types of digital interfaces. Unless you are using one or the other, it's not going to make any difference. If you are using one or the other, it would be best to have the correct one chosen for your shit to work. Otherwise it's moot. I don't think it'll have any effect on performance.
Do you have all your latest drivers?
The defualt setting for recording format is Stereo / 24bit. It was givin' me all kinds of problems (popping, shutting down, etc.) So I set it to Mono / 24bit unpacked left-justified, and from then on, no problems. I can still use Stereo, but apparently 24bit vs. 24Bit unpacked left justified makes a big different on my setup.
I'm not saying that changing that setting will solve your problem. I'm just saying that your issue may not be related to your O/S.
Either way, though, I'd tweak out XP as much as you can... even if it was already working fine.