Can anyone tell me? I have the original Avid M-box and Music Creator 5, neither of which I have yet used. I'm using windows XP on an old Dell laptop. I understand I need a Digidesign ASIO driver, but will that all work together, or do I get a different interface? This is all very low tech, but I'm just starting out.

you should be able to get M-box drivers from Avid's or maybe from M-audio's website (I don't know which website they would have left that product's legacy software on) for WinXP.  If you upgrade the computer to Win7 or above you probably won't be able to find drivers for it for those OS's tho.
 
just download the drivers and install them.  install MC5, change the driver mode in MC5 to ASIO (it defaults to WDM) and you should be good to go!

Thanks I've done that and it works. Unfortunately, now I can't get midi because the old mbox has no midi, so I got an M-Audio midisport 2x2, downloaded and installed the driver, but MC doesn't see it. I see on another thread that that's a common problem with midisport. Sigh.

All good. Installed midisport driver for 4th time and now it works

good deal!  glad it's working for you!

Thanks for your interest. Actually there is another problem now. I haven't been able to find Cakewalk Sound Centre. It doesn't appear in the drop down in the 'Add Track' menu. Do you happen to know the name and type of file containing  sound centre files?
 
When I loaded the cakewalk disc, the computer immediately crashed. This happened 2 or 3 times, telling me to try in safe mode. I did this and it worked and I loaded the disc contents. At the time it told me it couldn't load amplitube because it was in safe mode. Do you think there is a similar problem with Sound Center?
 
I went back and ran Sound Center install separately, but it made no difference, and I've trawled through all the folders and can't find any soft synths. I can't even find anything that looks like what I think soft synths might look like on the DVD. Do you think I should un-install and re-install cakewalk again, or can you or someone else think of what the problem might be? As it is, I can only record audio. Unfortunately, I'm totally new to DAW, so am very much in the dark.
 
Cheers
Andrew

I don't know what you mean by the drop down for "Add Track" and soundcenter not being there.
 
you can insert a soundcenter by using the browser strip.  click on INSTRUMENTS, then VST2, then it should be listed in that list.  double click on it and it will pop up a window asking if you want to insert a MIDI/OUTPUT track or an INSTRUMENT track and some other options.

Thanks for that help. I've sorted it out now. It had been installed in a Steinberg folder,