still problems, here's more info this morning I shut down all systems, then re started the server............ in the event log : The dns proxy agent was unable to bind to the ip addresss 192.168.0.1 ( the server ip address ) etc etc I can ping ns lookup non - existant domain I have altered / done nothing to this, the mail server locked up and from then on I cannot rectify my problems, and bing new to all this doesn't help........ any one have any suggestions where to go from here ? regards steve alcock