ScottyG,

Best of luck to you--I can't help with the playback issue, I use Mac, which has similar problems but different solutions--I can give you tip, and that is to remember that each element in you system has options for selection input and outputs, and sometimes there is something there that you didn't think of--At the risk of confusing you, here are some of the NO SOUND problems I had:

I discovered that I wasn't sending MIDI to my synthesizer because the port was selected for ethernet in the operating system, so my computer thought it was in use--

When I upgraded my operating system, one of the programs I used stopped saving my port selection, and defaulted to the my printer port when I started up--When I selected the Modem port in the program's midi window, I got a deafening rush of noise(forgot I maxed the volume when I was getting no sound)

Another time, I discovered that, for whatever reason, the device I was sending to(a Roland JV-880) was selected in my sequencer for the tracks I was using, but was selected for tracks that I wasn't using--

And yet another time, I discovered that the MIDI channels I was sending to on my keyboard somehow or another had been muted--had to reset the value on my keyboard--

Of course, I have had lots more problems than these, but I chose these to show you different causes for the same problem--throw in the fact that each of the problems related to a different element, from a different mfg--and there was no single tech call that I could have made to clear them up--that is how it usually is--

I will suggest that you check around to see if there are mail-list support groups for each of the components you have in your system, software/computer hardware/and synthesizer--they can be a lot of help, and you can often get almost instant response--there used to be a Finale list that expanded to include other notation programs, but I left the list, lost the address, and don't know if it still exists--nice thing was that the members of the list were sort of evangelists for music notation software, so they were really responsive to newbies--