See, I have the same concern, especially when MS has done similar things before. They say they introduced sub routines to take care of H/W settings and such, which might be good for quick testing, but I am sure that these routines will prove more harmful on the field. And this brings us back to long init code cause you can’t trust these sub-routines. -This is just a supposition, I haven’t experimented with DX8 yet, only DX6 and DX7, so I might be wrong-