Might have spoken too soon re 2.6.26-5-rt9 kernel.. Yesterday "seemed to be OK" Today definitely not OK - - midi connection probs - apps crashing and freezing and then resisting all attempts to "kill" and "killall" Maybe due to this issue Esben Stein pointed out on this list recently http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Removing_the_Big_Kernel_Lock UbuntuStudio has released (maybe unofficially) 2.6.26.1 rt kernel http://www.linux-archive.org/ubuntu-kernel-team/152269-ubuntu-studio-rt-2-6… So again I wonder what is the latest rt kernel that works with audio ie. jack, midi etc and can be compiled with nvidia's driver? Otherwise I go back to 2.6.23, grab old pkgs from somewhere and recompile - but I hate going backwards! Cheers Norv Make the switch to the world's best email. Get Yahoo!7 Mail! http://au.yahoo.com/y7mail