MIDI and XP ????

I made the mistake of buying a computer with WinXP home on it. I have a Creative sound card with thestandard MIDI going through the Game port. My problem is that I cannot get MIDI (through the UART) to function at the same time as through the internals (like I am used to with my WIN98 computer). I have loaded and reloaded all the possible drivers and I am very frustrated that I am limited to 2 MIDI channels when I have music that runs 12-13.