Joe - I can't offer much help on the DT Betas, since I haven't seen one, and the info on the DT sites doesn't really say much about what's being done.

Quicktime seems to be okay, and I've used it some. My system was recently hijacked by Windows Media Player so that it insists on turning on whenever I try to open anything related to music - I gotta do some cleanup. It also doesn't seem to cause any real problems, I just don't care for the interface.

Win95 and 98/98SE do sometimes have problems with RealPlayer. I'm not sure whether they apply to Win2K etc. Microsoft had a note on it in the Knowledge Base, but apparently "archived" it when RealPlayer claimed to have fixed the problem. - Can't find it now. RealPlayer won't run on my machine (I've tried 3 versions) although it worked fine on my S.O.s identical (except for special purpose software) Win98SE machine and works on her current Win2K.

Most of the notation programs do an on-the-fly spacing anytime you "import" something, and that would probably be the case bringing in an older Finale file in a new version. Finale 2001 (I have a demo) has a selection for "alignment" that says:

"If Automatic Music Spacing is checked under the Edit menu, your music is automatically spaced as you enter it according to engraving standards. If unchecked, then select a region with the Mass Mover Tool and choose Apply Note Spacing from the Music Spacing submenu of the Mass Mover menu."

You might take a look and see if you're set up to get what you want to get, or if an "Apply alignment" will fix what you're seeing.

You're original problem with "locking up" still sounds like a memory leak. About all you can do is delete temp files (everything in Windows\Temp, it won't let you delete anything that's actually "in-use"), reboot more often, and defrag frequently.

We seem to have hijacked the thread (drifting wildly in unknown waters?) I'd say we ought to start a new one to discuss problems, and leave this one for it's original purpose - but I'm not sure what we'd call the new one.

John