Update: Despite all of your amazing help with this, I've decided to ditch working around it completely and upgrade my software to 64-bit.It will mean that we won't eat for a year, but hey - Steinberg will be able to afford a nice holiday!Thanks again.

Thanks so much ha14.

ha14 - once again - thank you so much for your reply - but it's simply too advanced for me - I think I'd get myself into a right pickle!...really stuck now - not sure what to do....I've read that Windows 8 is compatible with drivers written for Vista, so maybe I should install Vista in my partition?

Sorry Jan F.Re-reading your answer, do you mean I would need to buy an older XP compatible graphics card?I still have the old one from my Dell Inspiron 9150....

Dear All - I can't thank you enough for your feedback.Bruce - since posting, I had indeed read about latency if using the VM route, so scrapped that idea.Regarding your solution, can I just ask the following - (please excuse my ignorance!)1. Is it easy to install another hard drive - is there anything I need to know? - is there a specific kind of hard drive I need to get? I've added RAM to a machine so it's not too daunting..2. How do I remove 'all networking components from XP' - what am I looking for and does this matter if I'm working entirely offline anyway?3. How do I 'fix the boot components for Windows 8.1'?Oron J - I am considering a much needed upgrade, but there are issues here as well:1. I'd be unable to open my old files, although there appears to be something called 'Bitbridge' that may solve this if I go down this route.2. Most of my recordings use the brilliant Roland Edirol Orchestral, which is 32 bit and discontinued for some reason, but again - there's a possibility of opening it with Bitbridge, but this is a gamble, for the amount of money I'm looking to spend...Can I ask - what exactly do you mean when you say 'maintaining an XP system' - if I'm working entirely offline - what problems am I likely to encounter?Jan F1. OK - now I'm worried! Is it easy to change the settings of the USB 3.0 ports (whatever they are!) within the BIOS?2. My graphics card is a NVIDA GeForce GT705 1GB DDR3 - do you know if this is dedicated?3. Are there any other components that wouldn't work?4. Basically, is my plan to install XP doomed due to the missing XP drivers?ha141. Is the INF(Chipset) driver something I download and install? Would this be a solution to the problems Jan mentioned?Once again - thank you so much for your time in trying to help me work around this.M.

Most of the things I could think of have already been explained in detail. One or two things I do want to pitch in:Only the retail versions of Windows are licenses for both, 64-bit as well as 32-bit. Since your operating system came with the computer it most certainly is a OEM license and only valid for the exact version and edition it shipped with. The license would not work with the 32-bit version of Windows 8.Only the Pro version of Windows 8(.1) is eligible for a downgrade. If your system shipped with the standard Windows 8 license you will require a valid Windows 7 license in order to downgrade.There are no 4th generation Intel Chipset drivers for Windows XP. If you do get it running there would most likely be some components or things that simply won't work within Windows XP or would require certain work-arounds e.g. USB 3.0 ports won't work unless you set them to run as 2.0 ports within the BIOS.Since you didn't mention it in the specification you'd also require a dedicated graphics card because the Integrated Graphics chip won't work duo to the missing drivers.

Bruce summarises the pros & cons pretty well. I'd like to suggest that you consider a different route - upgrading Cubase! On the down side, it will cost you money, anywhere from around $100 for the "Elements" version and up to $600 for the full-whack "Pro" version. On the other hand, the effort of installing and maintaining a Windows XP system - no longer supported by Microsoft - should be taken into account. Additionally, depending on your needs, perhaps you can use a different package such as Audacity, which is free (or you can study the list of alternatives at http://alternativeto.net/software/cubase/).

There appears to be a 32 bit version of Windows 8?! well if the 32-bit software designed for XP on Windows 8? is compatible then yes it can solve the problem. Make older programs compatible with this version of Windowshttp://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/older-programs-compatible-version-windowssince xp maintenance/updates no longer is supported maybe better to make the virtual solution and restrict access to windows 8, . Do not enable read/write shared folders between your Windows guest virtual machine and the Windows 8. http://www.howtogeek.com/189974/how-to-share-your-computers-files-with-a-virtual-machine/Running XP off an external drive.: Windows 8 perhaps do not support that, you have to be carefull since during boot windows re-initialize USB drives so will loose the connection? USBoot[BROKEN LINK REMOVED]PWBoot http://reboot.pro/topic/6851-project-pwboot-latest-version-302/Windows In Your Pockethttp://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-pocket,1113.html

First off, Dell is required to give you the means to create recovery discs if they do not ship the media with the computer. There WILL be a program on the system that will allow you to do this. If Dell does not package their own, you can use the one built into Windows 8.1. Just go to the Start screen and type 'Recovery' and you should see an option for 'Create a recovery drive'. You will need several blank DVDs or a 16 GB or bigger flash drive. Make sure you do this before making any other changes to the system.Dual-booting is probably your best option although it will not be the easiest one to set up. The benefits of dual-booting are that the operating system is running on metal, will be using your internal hard drive, and the 32-bit drivers for Cubase will be assured of working correctly.Running in a virtual machine (Windows 7's XP Mode is also a virtual machine) means that you have Windows XP running inside of Windows 8 (or Windows 7 if you choose that option) which will increase the amount of latency you see in your recordings. You are not really running two operating systems simultaneously. One operating system ends up running as an application inside of another operating system. When you consider that you would then be running Cubase inside of XP inside of Windows 7 or 8, should be able to see how latency will become a big issue.Running XP off an external drive is still dual-booting the machine. The only difference is that if it is a USB drive, you have to contend with the latency involved there as well. An eSATA drive would not be as much of a problem. But you are still dual-booting the machine and now need to be concerned about having the drive available any time the system boots, especially if you are defaulting to the XP operating system.Running 32-bit drivers on an 64-bit OS sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Putting a 32-bit version of Windows 8.1 on the system may allow the entire thing to work for you. Only 2 people have voted on Microsoft's compatibility list regarding Cubase SX 3.x. One says it works as is and the other says it doesn't work at all. It is possible that one of them was using a 32-bit version of Windows 8.1 when they tried this while the other was using a 64-bit version, but we have no way of positively knowing.If I was going about this, I would go with dual-booting using the internal drive. Actually, I would go a step further and add a second hard drive to the system. I would reduce the size of the existing Windows 8.1 partition to make room for the Windows XP/Cubase SX installation quite possibly splitting the amount of drive space equally between both operating systems. After installing Windows XP and applying all updates available for it, then installing Cubase SX and all of its updates, I would then remove all networking components from the XP installation. Since XP is no longer receiving updates, I want to protect it as much as possible. Then I would go in and fix the boot components for Windows 8.1 that the XP installation would have trashed so the Windows 8.1 bootloader is used.By doing this, you would have your Windows 8.1 installation that you can still use for accessing the internet safely, office productivity apps and all of the usual stuff. When you need you DAW, you just boot into XP and you are ready to go. The purpose of the second hard drive is for all of the data files for Cubase. Don't store any of that stuff on Windows XP's C: drive.