Advice on sound

what are you recording?  guitar?  vocals?  are you plugging in direct?  using a microphone?

using the onboard soundcard is always going to be lower quality.  there are some recommendations on my website.

You left way to much out to even begin to make sense of it. If you have a $5 mike and a Cheapo cord and are recording in the laundry room there will be a lot of noise. If you have a $1,000 condensor mike and you do not have the right type of room with some sort of wall and floor treatments, you might hear a Mouse fart down the street in the recording. Also you say i have XP, is that on a 10 year old Celeron with 256 of ram? Or a rather new system and you just love XP?

What you need to do is give us a bit of information as to what you are doing. Give details like this: I am recording dirent into the sound card using a Radio shack mike and my accoustic guitar, or i am using a Fender strat and plugging into the sound cards Line in/ or using the mike input. See all of this matters, since each piece of information tells us something about what possible issues you might face. Example: If you plug a guitar into a mike input you are running thru the built in preamp in the sound card, and might be getting some noise.

I hope this helps you to know how to help us  .... er well help you!