Hi Larry, the thing I appreciated about the IE media bar was that you actually view the Windows Media Player itself from within IE instead of having it appear in a separate (Window Media player) window and accidently get hidden from view when browsing on the internet. The Windows Media Player effects you mentioned were also easily available if you wanted to adjust them. The removal of Windows Media Player/IE integration feature is more of a minor convenience loss than anything else I suppose.

All my applications programs (including IE6) are working fine after installing SP2. Though I don't know for sure, I suspect your Internet Firewall security settings may have been changed following the SP2 upgrade, and that simply adjusting this may have corrected the problem.

Scott