Here is the answer you don't want...get a Mac. Give up trying to use windows. I spent a lot money and even more time trying to figure out/trouble shooting my old hp with numerous daw's and interfaces. Everything looked good on paper, but just didn't work. So I literally put my hp in the garage on day and went out and bought a macbook pro, suddenly all of my gear worked.

Best of luck.

Yeah that might be it, just trash whatever it is you have and spenda whole bunch o' dough. It could just be the firewire chipset, if you read carefully Presonus specifies that only certain firewire chipsets work with their gear. I think I might research that and drivers first but thats just me cause all my Presonus gear works just fine on Windoze and I got lots of things I could spend money on, but get a Mac.

pc's work just as good as macs, there's lots of firewire issues with mac too, with presonus,mackie,allen&heath.there's a long thread about that on GS.
either platform,you need the right card or the right on board chipset, and it could be in the settings or drivers too.
get in touch with presonus tech support.
they should be able to sort you out.

I have to agree that PC's don't seem to be any worse, or better than Mac's. Most of the Studios here in Nashville use Mac's cause they are COOLER ( I guess?). I've never owned a Mac, but spent plenty of time in pro and home studios using them and watched them hiccup as much as PC's. My main unit is an HP, it's about 4 years old and is running XP. I never had to make any changes or have never had any problems running Sonar with a Presonus FP10, or Motu MK828. I never had any driver problems or software settings needing changed or any of the nightmares so many people have. Lucky I guess? My Projects don't get crazy big (usually around 16-20 tracks with multiple plugs in some), and I've never had a single drop out or crash while recording. I usually don't even turn off my firewall, Anti Virus software, or unplug the ethernet cable.

What is your operating system? XP or have you changed it to Vista or Win7? Nothing wrong with any of them.

The onboard firewire is not going to play well with your board. Most interfaces hate the Ricoh chip and I don't blame them. It isn't very good. Most interfaces also don't like a 4 pin firewire connection. You do have an Express Card slot so you should purchase an Express Card firewire adapter. This will resolve that particular problem. If you have upgraded to Win7 then I have another tip or two to help out. Also, you will need an external hard drive whether it's firewire or usb doesn't matter as long as it's 7200 rpm.

If you want a Mac don't cry about it. Go buy one but make sure it is one of the Pro models or you'll be having the same problems as using the average consumer bought wintel machine. However you certainly don't a Mac to do what you want. I've used both types very successfully so don't buy into the general superiority of either one.

yeah, all firewires are not created equal. on laptops i've used, the firewire SUCKED a big one. and even the external cards were not that good (but i bought cheap ones, maybe a more reputable one would solve this problem)

anyways, the solution is not 'buy a mac'. mac's look great and run fine, but i wouldn't call them better. i'm pretty sure people just say they are better because they want to justify the absurdly high price point of macs. (for comparison, to build the equivalent of my PC now in mac form, it would have been about 2x as much)

The only reason MACS cost more is a great one. They control every single piece of hardware that goes into them. They are more thoroughly tested (not perfected) for compatibility issues. With PC's you have 4837 manufacturers using components from 7384 factories and the majority of those have no testing or QC. That is why PC's have many more hardware issues than MACS do. It is not all Microshafts fault.

Heres my point, I am not saying a pc and microsoft can't be used. In my experience using hp, sony, and dell computers running some sort of windows I have always had issues. My last pc was an hp, spec-wise should have been more than capable of recording. I constantly had "little" hiccups. And I was always told get a new sound card, firewire chip, some board, etc. I am not a computer guy. I feel like when time in the studio is spent trouble shooting you computer all is lost.

So basically if you're using a pc make sure all your parts are compatible. Odds are they won't be out of the box. Thats why I recommended a Mac. Even an older one, maybe, to save some money. I upgraded my computer and all my gear worked fine. I didn't have to replace any chips, boards, or cards.

To the thread above, I agree Macs are "cooler", and I'm sure thats where some of the cost is, but if you're spending hours on end at it, is that such a band thing?

everyone i talk to i tell them to never actually buy a prebuilt pc. they are god awful. if you build your own, you learn something that takes about 2 hours to put together the first time you do it, it's cheaper, and it works so much better.

when i say PC, i am basically saying Windows vs Mac OS, not the hardware. I think Windows is much better and 'free' whereas the mac tries to be idiot proof so you can't really do things that you want to

sarNz wrote: I think Windows is much better and 'free'...

What?!? since when is Windows free?