I (and others as I've learned) still have "show stopper" issues with MC 9.1. My primary issue is that it crashes within seconds of starting visualizations. In the past, people tried to tell me that it's because I'm "still" using WinMe or that there are "issues" with my grahics subsystem. It's been recommended that I do a clean install of Windows and find all of the latest drivers in the process.
Well, I've done that (and quite a pain it was too) and there's no change, but I may have an insight for anyone still interested in a stable 9.1.
I have MC installed on four machines:
1) Shuttle nForce2 MB w/integrated w/GeForce4 graphics, 512 MB PC2100, AMD XP1700, straight clock. This is my main system and it crashes on visualizations all the time.
2) PC Chips Via MB w/integrated S3 graphics, 128 MB PC100, Via C3 700 Mhz (Ezra), overclocked to 840 Mhz. Stable with visualizations (but crashes for other reasons).
3) AOpen MB (Intel 815 chipset) w/AGP ATI Rage Pro Fury (32MB) graphics, 256 MB PC133, Via C3 1000 Mhz (Nehemiah), straight clock. This system crashes just like the first one.
4) Asus MB w/AGP Nvidia TNT2 (32 MB) graphics, 512 MB PC2700, Intel P4 2.8 Ghz, straight clock. This is a test system and the only one running WinXP. It is stable but not used that much so it's hard to say for sure. One thing that is sure is that this is the only system on which I can adjust the fonts used in Damaged Layers III because on all of the WinMe ones the Visualization Studio is non-functional.
I find the most interesting difference is not WinXP but between the two Via C3 processors. The one with the more advanced graphics instruction set (Nehemiah) has that same issues as the AMD one.
Finally, I did not have these issues (others, yes) with MC 8.
Happy New Year!
Tom