I have Vista O/P and also have a plug in USB external H/d of 250GB If I have a word document in MS word and try and save it to the External H/D it comes up with I need adminstration permission to save to this drive, I usually end up saving to desktop and then drag & drop into the H/D but this is a nussuance when I want to add or modify this same document, Why Cann't I save direct to the H/D?

I also have Windows Media Player as default yet when I play a video from the internet it plays as Real player? Why not Windows Media Player?

check the file associations for the WMP issue, its in folder options under control panel.

as for the admin permissions, i dont have vista so i dont know it much...

afaik, you can right click on a .exe and run as administrator, try that....

otherwisre disable UAC?

goodluck

Exactly right about the right click. "Run as administrator" is under Properties.

Disabling the UAC, as I learned, causes security problems on the internet because for reasons I have no idea about, it disables the Internet | Protected Mode.

Am quite new to Vista, but these are two things I've recently learned.