MBOX Mini 3 Distorted Output

[coopere905]

Just bought the MBOX Mini 3, rcorded a few times with no problems using Audacity because I have no experience with ProTools just yet (though I did open it and make a quick recording).

When first recording, I noticed that I had to turn the gain almost all the way up for the XLR microphone I was using to get any input sound. Furthermore, after recording a few times, things started getting worse, and the output audio to my headphones had become scratchy, making any output sound practically un-listenable.

Here's what I did to try to solve the problem:
1. Tried a different USB port with no success.
2. Uninstalled all the software, and then re-installed things. When I installed the MBOX on its own, sans control panel, the output sound was clear and gain didn't have to be cranked to receive input, but this disallowed me from using ProTools because it couldn't recognize the hardware. After installing the control panel, however, and updating the drivers, things went back to the above (don't worry, I had installed the control panel prior to plugging in the MBOX the first time and this problem still happened).

I just uninstalled the control panel again and the sound's gone back to normal and gain doesn't need to be cranked. I want to use ProTools, though.

Any suggestions? I'm at a complete loss as to why the control panel is destroying my sound. It was set at both 41000 and 48000, with a latency of 512. Do either of these have something to do with the poor output quality?

Laptop
Mainboard : LENOVO 4389UN5
Chipset : Intel QM57
Processor : Intel Core i7 720QM @ 1600 MHz
Physical Memory : 4096 MB (2 x 2048 DDR3-SDRAM )
Video Card : NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M
Hard Disk : HITACHI HTS725050A9A364 (500GB)
DVD-Rom Drive : HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GT30N
Monitor Type : LP156WD1-TLB2 - 16 inches
Network Card : Intel 82577LM Gigabit Network Connection
Network Card : Intel WiFi Link 6000 Series
Operating System : Windows 7 Enterprise Professional Media Center 6.01.7601 Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
DirectX : Version 11.00
Windows Performance Index : 5.9 on 7.9