Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 Manual

I am at my wit's end with CWPA 9. After 3 years of owning this program and being unable to get it to 'play nice' in my computer, I am ready to cut my losses, give up on computer-based HD recording, and buy a workstation. Granted, I am not a computer genius, but I have to believe that my problems aren't all due to my lack of knowledge on the subject. I have 'optimized' my PC (Gateway, Pentium 2, 356 mb, 80G HD, Widows 98 SE, Delta 44 Audio card) and followed manufacturer's directions to the letter, but problems still persist. (Cakewalk tech support has not been able to fix the problem either.) The most annoying one is that after executing a transport command such as play or record, the program freezes for about a minute - completely locking up the computer. ctrl+alt+del gives me the 'Program is not responding' message. So, the program is virtually useless. The real kicker is that the program was working a short while back. I recorded some old demo's (to convert from tape to cd) and it woked fine! The next time I went to use it, it was useless again (this problem has come and gone before). AFter going in and deleting all of the newly recorded demos, it worked again a few times, but is now freezing EVERY time. And NOTHING has been changed on the computer! This seems to be spontaneously happening! Ghost in the machine? Any ideas? Anyone? Anyone? At this point, I'd settle for going back to a 4-track cassette machine!