Thank you all for your advise,

I think I should backup to BobCad for a minute here and tell you how I approached Mach3 initially as this may or may not be relevant to my current issues...When I loaded bobcad, it would not load beyond the "Demo"status.  Bobcad had me changing the compatibility settings to XP, run as administrator, disable desktop themes and so on. I Thought I needed to do these things with anything else that may not have been necessarily Vista compatible. Mistake on my part?...

Back to the current posts. After installing the card, not seeing a specific Vista driver on their CD, I got online, ended up in moschip, I relied on them to give me a compatible driver since I didn't feel confident on picking one. I do remember seeing Vista 32 driver in there on my computer after that, everything showing no conflicts, driver working properly at this point. I am sure the "get port address" folder was there, I just didn't see and think I needed to go anyplace the software was not directing me to and maybe I didn't need to. This happened to be the first sign I saw that Vista was denying Mach3 access to the driver. I have a much better understanding of what is happening here and it sounds like your advise to remove mach3, shut down, remove the card, reboot a couple of times etc.?? is what I should do. I am able to go into bobcad and can access the files that I had in there. Does this mean I have a problem with Vista and need to go through a Vista reload?

I don't mean to sound stupid here but, I could not quite figure out how to put the XML Hood gave me back into the mach folder. Vista is different to me compared to XP. There is no "save as" as I was expecting. I did what I thought was right. It may have been wrong...I don't feel the user friendlyness here with Vista. It also freezes up every now and then. This could be bad for my application as well??

I did not reboot twice as Kristen suggested but will do that. I am not a computer expert here however, with fairly precise instructions I feel confident I can handle the card issues, I do not feel comfortable enough to handle the OS stuff though. When I took mach off the system this last time, it seems like I didn't even take it off. Nothing changed so, not sure if I did it properly. Not quite sure how far back I need to take this?

I hope I am making a little sense here and apologize if I am not. I appreciate everything your doing for me, I am keeping the XP option on a seperate computer (older one) on the back burner.

I do not feel it is fair to me "the consumer" to iron out Bill's R&D issues (at my expense and your time), sit back and watch while he lobbies Congress to educate and exploit the worlds poor for his benefit while our "Lifestyle justified income & educated" are jobless . Sorry for the Political statement! I wish I could be just asking mach3 related questions at this point.
I will be monitoring this until early pm EST today and will have to be away until next weekend

Thanks Colin

Why would Vista tell me everything for this card is working fine but, deny access to mach3?

What would be considered a recommended processor size in an older computer to run mach only? I am keeping an eye out for one for the right price and maybe I can at least get started with it while the other issues get worked out.

CT
 1 Gig with min of 512Meg RAM and a fairly decent graphics card (64Meg or more) would be the min I would suggest. Memory is cheap, graphics cards are cheap, mobo and CPU are cheap, you could build an excellent platform for Mach here in the UK for under £200 (2Gig CPU, 160Gig HDD, 256Meg Graphics, 1 Gig DDR2), probably cheaper if you shopped around.
 BUT  as has been pointed out you could dual boot and use XP to run Mach and that would save you the expense of buying another computer. You may still get Vista working, I am sure there are quite a few that have.
 My experience with Vista is trying to sort out problems that customers have with their computers, lots of the fisherman I do work for have laptops/desktops in the wheelhouse for navigation, plotters etc, a few have newish ones with Vista and so far none are happy with the performance. The only person I know that likes Vista is my friend who is a gamer, he is very computer savvy and has stripped away Vista to the bare minimum. I should qualify my statement when I say he likes it, he only likes and uses it for one game and only that game, the rest of the time he boots to XP.

Hood

Hood,

As I am finding out about possibly changing the OS, is it still possible to have port issues even with XP on this computer?
If I were to dedicate another computer for mach only, it would eliminate me having to lug this back in from the shop each time I need it inside the office for drawing. This current computer has a dual core pentium, will mach3 v2.0 perform properly, would I need to upgrade mach if there is an upgrade for the dual core or does it even matter? I have just heard that if my software does not utilize this processor's capability it could actually decrease in performance. I don't know if this is true or not.
I am sure there are people running this setup however, they are more savy than I. I would like to know the basics of how to troubleshoot a problem when I am confronted with one, I just don't want to know more than I need to. At my level, (which is low)I was hoping for a more "plug & play" enviroment rather than the "plug, troubleshoot & experiment this deep" enviroment. Isn't this what Windows was all about in the first place?

Colin

You may find your port isnt up to the job of running Mach no matter what system you have it on, some PCI cards just dont work, usually because they have low voltages.
 Definitely better to have a seperate computer dedicated to the machine only, personally its the only way for me  but I know thats not an option for some people.
 Dual core shouldnt be a problem, dont use Intels myself  but I have AMD dual core here and it runs Mach fine. I have even tested Mach on an AMD Phenom and it ran fine,  the phenom is Quad core.
 Vista was meant to be more user friendly but from what I have seen it takes away choice and insists on doing things its way whether its right or wrong. Also it fights very hard against you when you insist on doing it your (the correct ) way Some of the hassles I have had with the boats computers are etched firmly in my brain never to be forgotten

Hood