Thanks Ric, I am going to try to write the installer so that if IIS is installed, uniserver isn't needed - but I do agree that it is an issue that has to be addressed. Though to be honest, most of the people who will be using this are pretty un-geeky so IMHO it is pretty unlikely IIS will be there, given that it has to be intentionally installed. I also doubt anyone will be running Vista...they are all fairly cash-poor volunteer groups...even the machines will be a little dated. I can't explain the mySQL problem. I already have mySQL installed on my machine but had stopped the service prior to installing uniserver. I can only report what happened. However...having just tested it again while writing this post, a new install of uniserver worked perfectly so I am not sure what happened at the time. Perhaps it was a code ID10T and I hadn't stopped mySQL after all...can't really answer...sigh Thanks for your comprehensive answer...genuinely appreciated