Buy Intel - If your buying a PC for making music get one with Intel Inside - cheaper alternative processors may seem attractive but history shows that these invaribly have proved inferior in this specialist area. You can bet your bottom dollar than manufacturers will optimize their software/hardware performance for Intel processors and have you ever seen a patch from anyone to fix a problem with an Intel processor ?, I haven't though have seen numerous for other processors. No I don't have shares in them either !

I can't hear anything.This situation could arise after an initial installation or it could happen to an existing set-up after installing new software, an upgrade, or new hardware. There are a multitude of possible problems, but here are the checks you should make:

1. All audio cables between synths, sound modules, amps, mixers and speakers should be working and connected correctly. It wouldn’t be the first time a professional studio had looked for a computer fault only to trace the problem to a dodgy cable.Make sure any devices are installed correctly. Switch off the computer and check that the card, for example, is pushed firmly into the ISA or PCI slot.
2. If using an external synth or sound module, make sure all the MIDI cables are connected correctly. If using a soundcard with a MIDI adapter, make sure the adapter is properly connected.
3. If you’re using a soundcard, open the mixer (most soundcard software includes a mixer application) and make sure the output is not muted and the volume is turned up.
4. Check that the MIDI driver for the soundcard and/or MIDI interface is correctly installed. To do this, open the Multimedia Control Panel and select the devices tab. Expand the MIDI Devices and Instruments entry, and make sure the driver is there. If it isn’t, you’ll have to install it. Follow the instructions that came with the device.
5. If you’re using the MIDI Mapper (the Multimedia Properties box in the Control Panel in Windows 95/98), make sure the device you want to use is selected here. Select the Device Manager in the System Control Panel and expand the sound, video, and game controllers entry. You should see the device listed there. If there is a yellow exclamation mark next to it, it means it is not correctly installed. Double-click on it and the window may tell you what the problem is.
6. One of the most common problems is an IRQ conflict. Plug and Play should resolve these automatically most of the time but it doesn’t always, especially if you have an older card, an older PC, or if your PC is stuffed to the gunnels with other cards. Select the Device Manager in the System Control Panel, double-click on the Computer icon at the top of the list to view the devices by IRQ, I/O, and DMA settings. This will enable you to check if there are any conflicts. If there are, refer to the hardware’s instructions for changing these.
7. You can probably do it via software from the PC, but some devices may require you to change jumper settings on the card itself.You should now be able to play a MIDI file or a Wave file from the Media Player.

I can play files with the Media Player but there’s no output from my sequencer.
Most sequencers allow you to route output to several different devices simultaneously and you may have to tell it what devices to use. In Cakewalk for example, select MIDI Devices (in the Tools menu in v7/8) and highlight the device or devices you want to use in the Output Ports list. In the Cubase family, open Setup MME, which should be in the Cubase Program Group. In the MME Outputs section, highlight the devices you want to use. Emagic Logic automatically selects all MIDI devices by default.