Mobile Pre USB Help?

[DuskOne]

Frickin Mobile Pre, I hope this is the right place to post this..

All right, I've had my mobile Pre for about a year now, coming up, and we've had our ups and downs..
But, here's my problem(s)...

This one being the most crucial as of now,
I'm recording with the interface, with an AKG microphone, and that's it, no instruments plugged into the interface or anything.

Now, my problem is, I'm recording only vocals, and everything was working fine until about 4 days ago, now when I record it records me slowly, as if I'm off beat, and I know I'm not lol. I don't know much about latency, I only know that I did not mess with it, and it just all of the sudden decided to start making me sound all bad. I record with Acoustica Mixcraft 3.
My system specs are:

Windows XP SP 2;
Intel Celeron D 3.20 GHz Processor
1mb of DDR ram
2 Hard Drives, One has 160GBs of space
The other has 90GBs of space.
Neither of them are filled to the brim with anything, and Im using the bigger drive to store my audio recordings.

Could anyone tell me what might be a good latency setting for this set up? Or what could be making it go wrong? Because, you can mess with the latency on the interfaces mixer that's on the computer, and you can mess with the latency on acoustica mixcraft.
If you can't tell me what MAY be a good setting can you at least explain Latency to me? Because it goes from 80-2048 and I dont know which one is faster, or better to use or what's in between.

Another problem I ended up having was I bought Magix Music Maker 11, and it worked for a while, then all of the sudden it started making popping noises while recording, or playing any kind of audio and I reinstalled it, uninstalled it, tried to contact customer support for that and got nothing, so I have no other clue what it might be, that's why I had to buy Mixcraft too.

Again, I never messed with the latency up until today, and I can't find a good balance.
Or is it something else, like I need to defrag my drive, or anything like that?

Thanks in advance.. and sorry, take it easy on me.

[itsplayed]

Welcome to the forums DuskOne,

A buffer setting of 512 is a good place to start....the lower the number the better, but the lower you go increases the prospect of popping and clicking.

Have you added any new hardware/software recently?

Are you using any other USB devices besides for the Mobile Pre?

Have you checked the transfer mode of your hard drives?

Have you checked your device IRQs for sharing?

[DuskOne]

Thanks for the reply, and the welcome.

All right, I'll leave it on 512.
I have not added any new hardware, or software as of late, so I doubt it could be that.

Hmm.. The only other USB object I have isn't even music related, it's my Internet connection modem for cable internet, but it's been plugged in all the time as well.

How do I check the transfer mode of the drives and what is IRQs?

Sorry, I know it should be common knowledge to me right? I'm just lost with all of this.