Hi Pranav I'm sure it must be possible to prevent the XmlTextReader from trying to retrieve external resources in some way. Whether it be by disabling validation or whatever. I just took a look at the XmlTextReader properties and XmlReaderSettings class and thought the following may help. I haven't looked at the documentation though, nor tested anything. The first thing you could try is setting the prohibitDTD to true which could tell the parse to ignore the DTD. Although it could simply cause the parse to through an error if a DTD exists. The second looks more promissing though and sets the ValidationType of an associated XmlReaderSettings object to none, which looks like it should disable validation. There are a few other properties that look like they could also be relevant but see how you go with the below first. XmlTextReader r = new XmlTextReader(); r.ProhibitDtd=true; XmlReaderSettings s = new XmlReaderSettings(); s.ValidationType=ValidationType.None Cheers ian -----Original Message----- From: program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:program-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pranav Lal Sent: 18 May 2011 01:39 To: program-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [program-l] Re: Visual Basic .net: getting XMLWriter not to access the Internet Hi Ian, All I want to do is to format the XML correctly so that each element is on a single line. Once that is done, my code takes over and adds aditional elements. That bit is working. The problem is in formatting the XML output correctly. See my response to David Lant. There seems to be a unique combination of the xmlTextReader and xmlTextWriter in which my code works. Pranav ** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe] ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the ** immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq] ** or send a message, to ** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq ** To leave the list, click on the immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe] ** If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the ** immediately-following link:- ** [mailto:program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq] ** or send a message, to ** program-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq