Hello Scott,

First the bad news..
No you can't transfer O/S settings.
XP needs to be installed from scratch.
And they are right, you cannot use Dell setup
disks for other PC"s (I have 12 dell workstations in the office)
Also sonar needs a fresh install
(You need to have installed all hardware first with fresh drivers though)


The good news....
You have a fresh install so this means a
very clean O/S without all crap.

O/S
Definately go for XP pro-edition.

Soundcard
The delta 66 is an excellent card, but you could consider a 19" rack soundcard.
(f.i. the delta 1010 rack edition, I think also motu has one)
One of the advantages are that the A/D converters are in the rack and therefore don't take processor time.


Data:
As soon as you have the P/C up and running smoothly with all drivers etc installed, just temporarely add the old harddisk and transfer the data. (this is the fastest way)
Second fastest is using the maxtor thru USB.
Ofcourse you can also use peer to peer connection but that is slow in case there's a lot of data to transfer.

Good luck

Fred