Possible Bug, couple of Questions and a humble Request

[informative]

I've been playing MTG for almost a couple of years (again) now since I discovered it would work within Microsoft Virtual PC running under either Operating System Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 so long as I set the four EXE files to Windows Server 2000 compatibility mode.

I'd also discovered that almost at random it will also even run under one machine (without being run under Virtual PC) running Server 2003. Still trying to puzzle out what makes this one installed machine unique that it will run.

Just seems like if I can put my existing MAGIC folder on the C:\ drive and it works that replacing the MAGIC.EXE or any combination of files from your compilation to overlay these should ideally still work without the warning message. Oh yes with the drawing error pulled aside, if I click deck builder it also says "card Number 0 does not have a valid rarity value"

So we have established my background with the game and of course love the game. I've meanwhile been very eagerly watching developments on here and as of yet still cannot find a way to download what you have here and overlay my C:\Magic folder and get it to come up. Well more exactly it DOES technically WORK but starts off with a "warning: couldn't initialize for card drawing" message which the untrained eye might assume is an "error" and click OK. Being a programmer for years I knew this warning would exit if I clicked OK so "AHA!" I dragged the error to the side and continued playing. Plays more or less fine except for the zoomed in large card images are blank. The small ones on the left for instance are drawn fine as are the small cards on the table.

Hopefully this may help identify where this possible bug exists.

It may just be that I have to run it on an older (less stable and secure for me) Operating system? What OS do you all run it under; those of you that are not having this error?

So my other question is, I've tried both Magic.exe as well as MagicT1T2T3.exe and if my goal would be to simply play with some new cards which of these would I run and will the deck.exe deckbuilder allow me to view and build decks with additional cards using what you have here?

Finally my request. There are so many links to rapidshare and whatnot saying cardart updates, new magic.exe and so on.

Might it be possible please for someone to construct the definitive release snapshot such as "August 2009 working 'C:\Magic' Folder" which is an entire working folder whereby someone like myself might have a chance of getting it working under Operating System XYZ.

I realize this would probably exceed the 100 meg size limit of most of the free file sharing service so if we could maybe even use USENET or maybe make a VUZE\TORRENT file (I do promise to seed it back to the group using my humble timewarner premium package 2.2 mbps DL/0.8 mbps upload cablemodem) for months to come.

Thank you all for your many creative efforts and imagination keeping this very excellent version alive!