To anyone using this MB, did you load the drivers from the included cd? If so, do you have ticks or plops when using PA? When using PA I have an occasional tick when a track starts and a very soft plop when I stop a trak that is playing: nothing dangerous sounding at all. Am wondering though if these could be eliminated by loading the drivers on the cd. So far I've just used native windows drivers and love the sound. My concern is that I'd be loading drivers for devices I never use which might hurt SQ.  Just wondering. Thanks.

Took Stephan's advice, fiddled with reactivating and got it activated in mimimised mode. Immediately "Unmimimized" and it worked. Now it is staying activated and all is well! One great thing is that reinstalling the OS has solved 90% of the clicks and all plops have disappeared with PA.

When I click away the error message above I am brought to the skin settings screen. It has 1.40 as the scale factor already in that field. When I close the skin settings field I get the GUI. When I click on the S I get the Skin Setting screen again. It isalways already set to 1.40. Deleting the 1.40 and typing 1.4 and hitting rescale doesn't help. When I restart XX it goes back to the beginning, no settings retained, and I get the original "14" error message.

Just wondering.

Was afraid you might say that. For clarification, when I first tried 9z7-2, I had not minimised the OS with 9Z7. Because I got the 9Z7-2 "14" error message, I tried 9Z7 and it "worked" and then deactivated leaving the OS minimised.....

So this morning I tried to do a restore to see if I could get back to the full OS and got the "shadow copy' error.

Was thinking that I should delete the DATA folder and see if I could get 9Z6 running to get the OS back? Thoughts?

Or I could, again, reinstall the OS and just try 9z7-2?

sh*t.....this all started when i accidentally unplugged the computer whith XX running (DO NOT ASK HOW THIS HAPPENED!)....everything got fucked up so I reinstalled the OS.......

Thanks Peter. Will check when I get home this evening.

After new OS install (didn't wipe out data, just reinstalled OS) I have a very strange circumstance: after getting a new activation code and activating and minimizing the OS with 9Z7, I felt successful, turned off the computer and took a break. When I turned it back on, the OS was properly minimized (red/white "x" on speaker icon in lower right taskbar); however XX was no longer activated--it reverted to demo mode! I then tried to click on the red highlighted "minimize OS" button and got the "not possible in Demo Mode" message. So, though the sound is fantastic, I am unable to get back to the full OS. Additionally, I get an error when I try to get into the restore program. See pics below for details:

After a new OS install I get the following error when trying to start 9Z7-2:

Life after 50...just makes ya feel a little foolish sometimes......well, in my case, a lot.

Thanks, I just figured it out--hadn't locked pages in memory for a long time.....

Bad day. Had to reinstalled the OS. Now, whenever I try to play a track I get the following message (rebooting doesn't help):

Hey Juan, if you are reactivating by pasting your activation code into the activation box, be sure that you first play a few tracks, maybe even reboot and play a part of one more track and then paste your activation code into the activation field. This has worked for me several times.

"Playback Drive" is a new drive option found in the settings area where you set the Music Drive and the Data folder. I don't believe it is recommendd that the OS and XX be on different drives. You can read about the Playback drive here:
http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2092.0

Hi Juan, I found that changing the NOS device buffer to 8ms helped control the ticks and plops in my system.

So I used a reformatted (NTFS 64kb) WD 5000H1Cs-00 drive that I purchase back in 2007. I think its 7200 rpm but I'm not certain--a quick google search didn't help answer that question. Anyway my first impression is that I need to spend  more time listening to really judge the merits of the playback drive versus the XX/OS/Music drive as described in my signature. With that said, my second impression is that the playback drive sounds similar to a SFS of 60 in Z7, whereas the XX/OS/Music drive sounds more like a SFS of 2 in Z7. So I think I don't like the playback drive as much as my current setup. This sound that I like has a freshness or presence that makes the music sound live--not as in a live recording but as in the artist is in my room as a real presence. Again though, I need to spend more time with this---20 minutes or so of AB-ing isn't enough.