This is probably a problem with the software I'm using, but unfortunately it is discontinued and no longer supported. I'm using the Yamaha SoftSynthesizer S-YXG50, a software MIDI driver. The driver will drop its polyphony to zero during playback (cut off all instruments prematurely) resulting in very poor sounding playback. Here's what I [i]think[/i] the problem is: The driver has a setting that allows the user to select a certain CPU % usage limit that the driver will use before it starts reducing its CPU usage. My guess is that whatever method they used to detect CPU usage does not work properly on a dual-core machine and results in the driver reducing its CPU usage at the wrong times. To test this, I altered Windows' boot.ini so that Windows only used one core and rebooted and the problem went away until I rebooted with both cores enabled again. Now my question - is there anyway to know how the driver would go about figuring out CPU usage, and if so, tweak things around so that the driver doesn't keep thinking it needs to reduce its CPU usage? I hate to have to reboot and cripple half my CPU every time I want to use the synthesizer. P.S.: Is there any way to post here without using a proxy? Every IP address I get has already been banned.

In truth there are very few programs and drivers that are fully smp tested and aware and fully supported on XP. Try to contact Yamaha and ask for support. There is little you can do without detailed technical information.

Tried that, but no luck - "not supported anymore".