How do I fix this? Reaper/m-audio 2626 problem

Download the DPC Latency checker and run it on your laptop, see what it reports

I have a profire 610 (I think it's the same driver??) and not even a hiccup. The latency checker mentioned (I think it's this one??) is a good place to start. Some have reported that having the UAC off has helped (mine is off). Also, please try to disable AERO as this too has helped improve performance in DAW environments. A TI fireire card is ideal. Maybe the one you got from dell already is? You'd know for sure because it has the state of texas imprinted on the chipset/s. Much of the time (though no guarantee) the TI chipset will improve things. Sorry you are having issues :(

I encountered the same problem with my old dell inspiron/windows xp, and a M-audio FW 410. 1- You need a firewire card with a TI chipset, 2- An asio sound card needs a dedicated IRQ to work fine, which is not the case whith a laptop (I imagine IRQ works the same way in XP and Seven). On my laptop, firewire, usb and audio use the same IRQ, and this cant be modified. After a long search, I found a way to have my soundcard working: I need to have an USB device plugged in: dont ask me why, I dont know. but it works. And if I unplug my USB device, things turn bad immediately. Try this, maybe it will work for you.

Thanks guys for your response. I've disabled the UAC, turned off the AERO, and ran the Latency Checker- it showed that my network card (DW1525 802.11n WLAN PCIe card) was causing a latency issue. I turned it off and keep testing Reaper to see if this helps. The card came with the Dell unit, hard to imagine Dell putting a faulty network card in their own computers. I updated drivers for it, but that didn't change anything. I'll need updates the net, I suppose I can turn it on and off to do that. I'll let you guys know if that fixed the main problem with Reaper after messin with it a bit. Thank you again for the suggestions- Joe

wifi is notorious for causing errors.

whoa! If you wanted to though, you could swap that out right? I know it's a pain but it is something you can do right?

Yes and no, on some models changing the WLAN card to a different model or turning off the obsolete A-band fixed the problem for normal users indeed, that all didn't help us low-latency guys though. What makes the Dell case more remarkable than others seems to be that they had all trouble you can have with realtime audio spread evenly over their entire product range, so that indeed us Vostro guys neeeded to turn off the "MS compliant control method battery" driver in addition to the WLAN, some IIRC Inspiron guys needed to turn off the DVD, "Studio" model buyers were lost because nothing worked on some models, on the next generation the ACPI.SYS was all of a sudden responsible for the trouble... But like I said, that is (hopefully for the most part) solved so far, you have to cripple only one thing on currrent Dells as far I could see, I just mentioned it because the OP was so shocked that Dell could do such a thing. Well, they can and they do and they will keep on doing this.

I'm bummed to hear it.