[Rail Jon Rogut]

No.. phone support should be free if it's not a user error (I believe).. I've never been charged on the occasions I've called.

There was an article in the monthly email from Digi which just arrived today with this:

Q: Why is there an "unable to acquire hardware" error when launching Pro Tools LE 6.0?

A: It's possible that another MIDI application is loading our MIDI driver, which in turn will acquire DirectIO leaving the digi hardware unavailable to Pro Tools. AMS, for instance, will launch the MIDI Server, which will acquire DirectIO making PT unable to use the hardware. Make sure that the "MIDI Server" process is not running when launching Pro Tools LE 6.0. You can also remove the MIDI driver "DIOOSXMIDIDriver.plugin" from the /Library/Audio/MIDI_Drivers/ folder to see if this solves the error. Please check the Digidesign User's Conference or Answerbase for other helpful information.

But, not sure if it's something that applies to you.

Good luck.

Rail