night, missy.

that problem shall be solved for sure

but i'd really really go through the things i have listed so you're on the safe-side-harware-wise. i really would advise you giving fruity loops a shot, combined with nice plugins it really delivers.

if the problem shows up using particular plugins and/or if piling lots of plugins in comparison to a tune using few to new vst(i)s this would speak for a hardware-related problem as pointed out above.

in general drivers don't go "bad" from one day til the other, do they?

maybe it's other stuff you installed recently, say the windows xp servicepack 2 or something? to little diskspace can be viscious as well.

;)