Okay....so, stay with me?
 
We installed MC6 on our laptop, had a few issues with latency, got those solved with help from this forum....thanx again!  We then installed and hooked up an M-audio Fastrack USB interface, and new problems arose.  We wanted to use the interface to record electric guitar, which in the past with our other pc's and gear, had no problems, but to no avail could not get it to work right! We could hear the audio through the headphones, but nothing was "going into" MC6 audibly. (??make sense??) So, we then scrapped that interface idea to soley just go with midi for now. Uninstalled the M-audio interface, drivers and all, and now have horrible midi audio, which was NEVER a problem before.  We then uninstalled/reinstalled MC6 and have the same midi audio problem.  When we open Cakewalk SoundCenter and use the virtual keyboard, it plays the note, but it comes out very "fuzzy" and static-ey. This problem didn't occur until we used the interface and continued even after we unistalled its software. In "Prefs" I have the sound output set as "Speakers and Dual Headphones," and for the input I have "External Mic" selected.
 If anyone could help us it would be greatly appreciated. 

Hi JD
you're not going to be able to get the onboard soundcard on a laptop to work well with MIDI and softsynths.  the fast track usb should be much better for that purpose as well as for recording audio.  my advice is to reinstall it and let us help you with it instead of trying to get the onboard soundcard to work because it never will.

make sure you get the latest drivers from m-audio for your laptop's operating system
then once you have the fast track installed, in MC6, hit the "P" on your keyobard and the preferences window will open.  on that first window that opens, change the DRIVER MODE to ASIO

hopefully that should fix your problems with the fast track.  if not, check back with us and we'll work on it until it does or until we determine there's a physical problem with the hardware.

Hi Beagle,
 we had the software working fine before we installed the interface. There was no lag or audio problems once we set the buffer.  When we had the interface installed,(went to M-audio and downloaded the latest drivers) we had selected ASIO and could not get a signal in the track pane.  Any sound we heard was through the headphone jack on the laptop. We had the audio in set to the Fastrack and out through the Fastrack, and tried all the other combinations as well out of desparation. I would love to be able to use the interface, for my other studio pc is becoming outdated and can not run all the fun things in MC6. (I am in the process of upgrading it, but can't find a new pc with PCI slots for my M-audio soundcard!) And my research so far shows laptops need external cards/interfaces, or if I could, I would replace the card. Maybe the HP laptop and the Fastrack don't play well together.

For what it's worth, I once had to delete my RealTek HD Audio software from the computer in order to get my interface to work (at that time, a Sound Blaster Extigy).
It could be the routing in the 24/96, not in MC.
By the way, which sound card are you using now? You mention the Fast Track, and the 24/96 and the 1010 in your signature.
There should also be ASIO drivers for the 24/96.
Theoretically, once the ASIO drivers are installed and selected, it should be impossible to use the stock computer sound card since Cakewalk software will only allow one device to be used while in ASIO and very few stock sound cards use ASIO drivers.

It's the M-audio USB Fastrack interface. That's what we are trying to use on the laptop.  The 24/96 is the card in my pc in the studio. The 1010 is my next upgrade for use with MC6, but as I have learned in here recently, only 2 tracks max simultaneously for recording with MC6.  Which is a whole other topic for another thread...Sonar x1? ...Studio edition?....Producer edition?.....Which pc to buy?....
  Anyway, I digress!

JD - but when you installed the drivers for the Fast Track on the laptop, did you change the driver mode to ASIO?  that's important.

Yes we did. Just tried it again, and same results.....

change it to WDM, let the wave profiler run.  see if that works.

are you running MC6 in administrator mode?

The M-audio is an audio only interface so getting the midi in will need to be done differently.... it won't go in through the audio only interface. 

Once it's in however, the M-audio running ASIO drives is the way to go. 

As Greg and Beagle point out..... you may need to delete the old soundcard and run it as Administrator the first time as you select the new ASIO drivers. Let the wave profiler run again and then choose the updated ASIO drivers for the M-audio USB. 

If it's seeing 2 cards it will get confused and that may cause issues too. 

I had issues at first setting up my laptop but once it was run as admin and the profiler ran, the ASIO drivers were seen and the new interface showed up and I was able to choose it as input and output and from then on it ran fine. 

We will try that and see how she goes. The midi trigger we use (Alesis QX49) is usb, so we don't need the interface for midi. This sounds as though it might work.....Let you all know.