Ah well, you gave it a good try. Frustrating I’m sure.
Actually you ‘can’ upgrade your sound card to a much better one for use with Win XP…one that does 24 bit, and for a really good price if you buy used and know what you’re looking for. Originally I bought an Aardvark Q10 ‘in the day’ for nearly $800, they have just about every feature & connectivity options one needs…Aardvark is out of business now, and I bought extra Q10’s & Aark 24 cards for about $100 or less each on ebay, I have 5 in total. Hey, another mans trash (for those that have gone 64 bit) is another mans treasure. That’s one of the best deals going on used audio cards (also stopped drivers at Win XP), but you can find deals on other brands in the used market too.
I too still use, and am staying with Win XP for all my music machines, though I use Win Vista & Win 7 on my laptops for general use). I’m running multiple XP machines as my resource limitation solution in lieu of 64 bit, and I don’t have any plans to upgrade … not my OS, not my machines, and definitely not my audio cards. I can run everything I’ll ever need to do with my set up.