Problem with Tascam US-1800.

I am running the Tascam US-1800 interface with Cubase le5 on an Acer Aspire 7535. (3Gb RAM, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Processor QL64, 2.1GHz Realtek High Defintion Audio version 6.0.1.5807 sound driver).
I have been trying to record bass guitar and, seperately, acoustic guitar through the instrument and XLR inputs into a blank project - so nothing that should put a lot of strain on the laptop’s processing. However after a couple of minutes, while I’m recording or simply monitoring the track to get levels right, the sound will freeze and a loud hiss will start up, or monitoring/playback will become extremely distorted. The hiss or distortion won’t stop until I turn the Tascam off. I’ve restarted both Cubase and the Tascam numerous times but the problem evenutally occurs again. I have also tried running the Tascam on different latency settings to see if it was a buffer size issue.
Someone suggested to me that the problem may be because of the built-in sound driver in the laptop not being powerful enough, but I thought that driver would be irrelevant considering the Tascam runs on it’s own driver?
Sorry if I have explained poorly - any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Hi Enzo,

Sorry if this is reply is over-obvious, but are you sure you selected the Tascam drivers?
And did you download the latest update?

I have the Tascam US-1800 also, and upon initial setup and doing a test i did neither of these things and also had problems… but it was more like distortion and buffer and asio overload.

Also, try a different USB cable?
Good luck,