Try specifying the MIDI I/O you wish to use with the options -midiindev and -midioutdev to find out witch port(s) is causing the trouble. This is AFAIK also the only way you can manually configure 'pd-midi-stuff' in Windows (which should also answer the second question).
Cheers Soeren
hi, I also got this error with pd 0.34 on a win98. I'm not using any reaktor or native instruments things, though. could it be something with the ASIO drivers other questions: is there a way of manually configuring pd-midi-stuff under windows ? are there any software drivers for gameports that worked so far ?