just out of interest what happens if you use windows sound recorder normally at the 60 sec setting. Do you still get the hard drive problems as with audio recorder a couple of minutes into the song?

can you not record a 5 minute silent (zero input) wave file in one go with audio recorder?

does audio recorder work any better if you load it first with a 5 minute silent wave file (always 'saving as' the recording as something else)?

it looks possible that loading a silent wave file is just reserving a contiguous section of hard drive reserved for saving the recording, pointing to swap file/defrag/speed/access time possible explanation of this problem???