Original Ultralite, Dell E6400, Win7 32-bit, install issue

[the1stretch]

I'm having issues with getting the Ultralite to work with the Dell E6400. Been trying now for two days!!

- I have rolled the firewire driver back from the Ricoh to the legacy firewire, as instructed somewhere. This enabled the Ultralite to detect, and the MOTU drivers show in device manager
- I have updated the firmware to 1.15
- I have installed the latest firewire / usb audio drivers from the MOTU site
- I have disabled the on-board audio driver
- I have set the default playback device to mainouts 1-2
- works fine plugged into my desktop via a TI firewire PCI-card on Win7 64bit.

So, I boot the lappy, turn on the ultralite, and the audio icon in the taskbar shows the Motu Audio Wave Main outs 1-2 selected, with signal showing on the bar.

When I try to load audio console, it seems to break the connection, and 'audio wave' disappears from device manager. I think this is normal.

When I open Control Panel > Sounds, it shows all the ins and outs, and shows signal coming out of the main outs. However the motu front panel LCD doesn't show signal and there is no sound from this output.

Conversely, when I plug a mic in the front, the front panel shows incoming signal, but the laptop sounds>recording tab doesn't show signal.

Cuemix won't open at all. Got one BSOD before.

Seems like a driver problem to me. Any ideas? They would be most appreciated!