Hi Sherry,

Yes, I went through both the forums and the knowledge base and found nothing exactly like the problem I was having. That is why I contacted support by email. They answered in just over a business day--a quite detailed answer, I must say. I am to do a clean sweep uninstal in accord with an article in the knowledge base--one which I copied into Metapad, suspecting that I might need it later. I need to shut down Avast Anti Virus, load no services at start up, etc., and do the installation in that state. What is going to happen, since I got the plug and play config. error the first time I installed both this and Nero, I don't know. But once installed, if there are still problems with midi playback (or any other), he wants me to move the card to a different PCI slot to force Windows to juggle the resources. He did seem anxious to hear back from me. I dont' know if that makes me optimistic, or not.

My registry cleaner is called RegSeeker. You can either have it find problem entries and use its broom or can have it search the registry and present you with a list of finds, including whether the entry is obsolete, does not point to a file, etc. This is slow, but you can at least double check on what it proposes to delete. RegSeeker has the virtue of being free, too . So far it has served well, but I haven't used it for some time now .

In case anyone should have a sound card problem, the uninstall url that I was sent is:

http://us.creative.com/support/kb/ar...3&sid=1712

Well, it's too rainy to go to the beach, and a degree too warm to ice skate, so I might was well get to it... Hope to see y'all later.

best,
mgj