I'm puzzled, was that supposed to be a revelation for me? If you read my comments above, you would see that I am well aware that Cakewalk "officially" stopped supporting Vista in X2. X2 worked perfectly for me and X3 actually runs but the VST Scanner blocks me from using the new VSTs and the ARA integration with Melodyne. Noel, Seth, and Dan....wanted to look into it because they felt it might be a really easy handshake type issue.

That does not mean I am not going to upgrade OS, I am just waiting for when I have the weekend to set aside. In the mean time, I'm still making music.

Beagle
Mike - I would suggest that you buy a new hard drive to install W8 on instead of wiping clean the one you have.  there are so many advantages to doing that.  for one thing, you can copy from one drive to the other any non-installed files without hassle.  the other is that you can still choose which OS to boot up in.
... 

And those plastic covers for the extra hard drives are only 20/25 bux (enclosures?), and you can use these hard drives off the USB ports. Great for backups! It's what I do with my hard drives, btw.

Mike - you've got 2 SATA ports and 1 PATA port on the motherboard.  if you don't have more than 1 hard drive already, then you've got plenty of room for another drive to be plugged in, assuming there are enough power cables from the power supply (is this a Dell?  if so, you'd better check that)

Thanks guys.  I am probably going to take this advice and go with the new HD; it seems to make the most sense. I never got around to taking the cover off the unit this weekend.  To many other issues came up and time slipped away, before I knew it, back to work.  Not a Dell, Reese, its an HP Pavilion.  It would actually be nice to have another HD in the unit and be able to utilize it as well.  I have never installed a HD or configured them to boot up differently. My brother-in-law has a small company that does Computer Forensics and builds machines however, so I will get him to give me a hand with it.