Hey Angry - I'm running 98 First edition on a Samplitude/Cake9 DAW with IDE boot, U2SCSI recording drive - pretty solid, but it took a while to get there. It still freezes once in a while, but in all fairness I'm running Samplitude, Cakewalk, 2 Hubi's loopbacks and C-Console for DSP Factory on a single 500 P-2. I think the fact that it runs at all is a major victory.

The newer Windows (2k and XP) are reportedly more stable and faster if your sound cards have WDM drivers available, but they're also hungrier for resources. You didn't mention the speed of your current machine or the amount of ram, that could be the deciding factor.

After listening to the horror stories of three different friends trying to get AOL (referred to in my circles as Assholes On Line) off their machines, I've realized there's a cure for AOL - it's called "FDISK"...

IE is reportedly as hard to get rid of - MicroSlop made it so you could supposedly get rid of IE because of the court rulings, but from what I hear it's a bitch. I am unfortunately about to find out on two of my non-music machines, since I have been plagued for the last 2-3 months with MicroSlop's version of Alzheimers - you click on a link, and sometimes it goes right there - other times, you get the hourglass, absolutely zero bytes moving either direction, and maybe it wakes up after you click again, maybe it waits up to a minute, maybe nothing happens til you click again later - The Compuserve tech said he had fixed his machine by completely removing IE and re-installing IE 5.5 - He said there were directions on MS's website.

I personally would NEVER put AOL on any machine I ever had to touch again, much less a music machine.

My DAW needs to be able to get online for updates, so I set up separate hardware and user profiles for music (no NIC, no modem, no frills whatsoever) and normal (everything enabled) So far, this has worked for me.

Most sites tell you to disable all the niceties of Windows for a DAW - I've found that I want the relative security of a pass-word protected screen saver. A sneaky way I've found that works for audio machines is this: Set up your screen saver the way you would like it to work, assign a password. Then search your drive for *.scr, pick the file that is your previously set up screen saver, and right click/drag it onto the desktop. It will give you an ICON for the screensaver on the desktop - click on the title twice, and name it whatever you want. Then, dis-able the screen saver in windows. Now, when you doubleclick the desktop ICON, the screensaver will activate, and will require your last-known password to de-activate - What it WONT do is continually check to see whether you've typed a key or moved your mouse, etc - So, no hiccups due to screensaver, just lock-out when you need it. Sorry for the divergence, just a useful tip. One of the biggest bad guys for audio machines is Microsoft's FastFind, part of their office suite. FastFind continually monitors your drives and indexes every bleedin' thing you do, in between normal read/writes - jumps in whenever it feels like it. For this reason, Office and Music should reside in separate rooms, not connected in any way.

IE 5.5 seems to be the IE of choice among Online techs, at least for Win 98 - IE should not be a problem for a music machine, because it only runs when you know it is (near as I can tell, anyway)

If you need to use a machine for dual purpose, I would recommend a separate hardware profile for music, with EVERYTHING disabled that isn't absolutely necessary for making music. When you boot up, you are given a choice of which "machine" you want - simple, and effective. Hope you got at least some of what you needed in between the blather... Steve

Well, in Windows 2000, IE *is* your desktop. No IE, no desktop.

Good god...why would you compare either of those two OS's!!! lol
First of all...just like any micro-shit releases..first runs are a no no!! Always stay with what is working until the others(like me!!) get them running well with all the latest service packs and etc etc!
Win2k right now is the most stable OS but it also depends if certain cards are Win2k ready or not! Also with the WDM drivers they can be pretty finicky..that's why I stick with ASIO based systems...hell of a lot easier to deal with IMHO..but hey, opinions mean nothing..unless you're Steve....OH...low blow!!! :D
Xp looks like a fisher price version of Windows so I immediately change it over to the classic interface...IE doesnt bother me..I turn off all net applications or settings to absolute minimum which gives me more umph in the long run.
98SE was good for a while until Win2k finally came up to speed with good drivers and software apps upgraded to handle the OS as well.
Opus