Thanks for the repley dude! I no vista is terrible, snd its not my skills that is the problem it appears that i have no end of bad luck when it comes down to setting up a webserver manually or using XAMMP!! I have set up webserver using both methods on freinds computers and it all works fine everytime, it just seems to cause no end of problems on both my machines..

Do you use XAMMP? Or install everthink seperatly- (mysql\PHP\Apache)

If using XAMMP do you have problems were the My.cnf file is picked up as a speed dial file when using XP pro???

If installing php\apache\mysql sepertly to create your webserver do you ever have problems adding the C:\webserver\php folder to the path of the Environment Variables???

The above problems seem to occur all the time using my systems but never on any of my freinds....

Any help you could offer would be cool...