Hi Mark,

I think I have solved the crime and tracked the criminal to his lair, but the question now is what to do with him.

After doing the sweep and a squeaky clean installation, and after installing the web updates that I downloaded through auto-update, I listened for the better part of an hour to some wav files, and while they played I made changes with the mixer, the volume slider in the tray, as well as opening and applying EAX effects. I almost believed that midi was going to work this time.

Since I had got some crashes playing .not and Magic Score's .sfd files, I decided to test out those first. I had not kept track, but was thinking that MS GS Wavetable Synth did not crash as readily as SB Synth A. So I tried this.

Contorl Panel/Sounds/Audio Midi playbackk default set to SB Sw Synth (which sounds about like MS Wavetable).

Played "Christmas" Symphony 1st movement (all GM in the .sfd and.not files, both) in Magic Score .sfd. It's device set to Sw Synth. Let it play for several minutes. Playback and sound without incident. Stopped playback and changed device to SB Synth A. Crash happened within 10 seconds.

Played "Christmas" Symphony 1st movement in Composer .not, with all staves set to Sw Synth. Everything A OK, until at the same point in the score, I set all staves to SB Synth B. Crash in under 10 seconds.

Physical memory usage in Process Explorer showed 110,000 available while the wave played in WMP.
During the sfd. playback Magic Score showed about 35,000 available and in Composer about 70,000 available. There was no decrease in physical memory available leading up to the crash.
During the wav playing, Thunderbird mail was open and I was connected to the Net. During .sfd and .not playback, the respective programs were the only ones open.

The next stage of the test was as follows.

After the last crash, I set the system default for midi to SB Synth A, which causes crashes in Magic Score and Composer.

Then I did playback exactly as above down to the measure where I changed from Sw to Synth A or B. The results were exactly the same. Even though the system default for midi was Synth A, the crash did not happen until I changed the program from Sw to Synth A or B.

Memory usage was the only difference. Magic score had 117,000 available and Composer started at 27,000 available and climed to 57,000 available at the time I made the change Synth B.

Unless there was a huge spike in memory usage at the crash that didn't register in Process Explorer, I think insufficient memory can be ruled out.

I will test further, using .mid files this time and WMP and Creative's Media Player, but if the results are similar or different, the conclusion that Synth A and B cause crashes on my system playing .not files, while SB Sw Synth does not (at least in the time I let the files play before making the change) is inescapable.

Whether there is a solution in my system settings or not, I don't know. Perhaps Creative needs to do a midi driver update (the version is 5.1, I believe). Perhaps the card itself is physically defective.

If you can think of anything I can add to the tests, I will sure try that.

It's kind of a pyrric victory to have identified and caught the dastardly crook; I have no idea what to do with him.

all best,
mgj