Recomended things to make midi?

Hello. I used to make small midi songs as a hobby, using a now discontinued set of software. One was a Yamaha XG soft synthtetizer that worked up to Windows XP 32. I used it to listen to the music with somehting better than normal Windows stuff. But after I moved to Vista 64, and now Windows 7 64bit, it does not work. Also, the application I used to make my midi(by punching notes into something that looks like a pentagram) is discontinued and it comes with a hardware verification program to disallow it to run on my new computer. So. What can I use now if I want to create midi again? I'd need something much better than the normal Windows midi synth. Thank you.