all good advice. will do this, including waiting a day or two in hopes this thread attracts more varied opinions and advice.

meanwhile, to add more clues, if I do go ahead and click through the startup no GM.DSL error and load a song, after clicking "Play" the next error I get is "Beat Map Stretcher unable to load wav file". This is presumably because the wavs which were supposed to be supplied by the GM.DLS map are not available. After this, BIAB freezes and can only be quit with task manager.

hopefully someone can offer advice on my concerns 1) and 2) in my last post.

thanks again