After buying the MDS-JB980 I installed sonic stage 4.3 on vista. However, it does not change to net-md when I connect my machine. Same with the NH1. Device Manager shows exclamation mark! Any idea how to sort this?

Sounds like an Avrin-question. My guess is you need NETMDUSB.SYS from somewhere.

Mine has a date of 08/08/02 and is 39K long.

Did the 4.3 install have that anywhere to be seen?

doesnt the 980 deck have a seperate driver?

I looked at the 980's manual. Seems you are supposed to run the OpenMG Jukebox install before hooking it up. To find it, go to the downloads section in this forum, and look under "drivers". You will see JB980 leap out at you. The name of the zip file is OpenMG_Jukebox_NetMD_Drivers.zip.

I am not 100% sure what you do with it, but I strongly suspect if you install this BEFORE SonicStage 4.3 you will be alright.

If that's a problem you can try putting it over the top of SS but in case all your existing library gets wiped out you better back up a lot of stuff.

I would be inclined to install this software to another computer (since I have plenty) and see if I can find the right driver to copy to wherever its supposed to be under SS 4.3. Someone here will explain exactly where to put it if there is an existing, functioning SS installation on your machine.

P.S. It may be as simple as copying NETMDUSB.SYS and NETMDUSB.INF from the zip file to C:\Program Files\Sony\Personal Audio Driver

Not quite. I have no idea about what Vista is all about. And all INF files in the more-or-less current versions of SS drivers seem to be related to portable devices only (not decks). And never forget the "M-crew for [whatever]" SONY approach.

And then again - no "M-crew" or "OpenMg Jukebox" will ever work under Vista.

But SS *is* the OpenMG Jukebox!!!!!!! (just an update of it, I hasten to add).

The downloads seem to indicate that the NetMD drivers are what is reqd for hooking up computer.