002 rack keeps losing asio driver in cubase 4.5

[nincompoop]

Hey all,

recently did a full clean reinstall of my XP pro partition, SP3 on a mac pro under bootcamp 2.1, cubase 4.5.2
My setup used to run fine, for 2 years, and I reinstalled everything exactly as it's always been.
Sice the new install, I keep getting the " digi 002 rack asio drive rnot connected "message when opening a song.
I then open the device menu and rechoose the driver, and it mostly works whenI just booted XP. But during work sessions, after closing C4 a couple of times and working with other apps such as soundforge 10, I reopen cubase and the driver is gone again, when choosing it in devices I get either a "bad device" message or " unknown error".
I tried changing Firewire ports, using different protools drivers, the standalone as well as the full install of 7.3 etc, same thing.
Why is it that I get that since the new install, and what could be the troublemaker? I always have to reboot to get rid of the problem.
I should mention that even when the digi002 is unable to connect to cubase, I can still choose it as the audio asio device for soundforge and it works there. That is why i suspect it to be a C4 issue, but not sure. Strange that it only occurs after my new clean XP install.

grateful for any hint!
Thanks!