Excellent, the first try, it ran without a hiccup.
The hard drive icon on performance widget now showed a consistent 75% instead of the 30% the old way which confused me a bit. As long as it works.
Thanks again.
 

I too have had a big problem with DROPOUTS as long as I can remember.  Dividing my C: drive into 2 drives helped me.  I now have a partition of my C: drive (known as J:) for all of my project files.  It worked great at first, until I started to record audio tracks...then I needed to reset my audio to the "default" settings and change the audio driver to "ASIO".  No problems now.
 
Thanks for your suggestions.
rockinpop