I've just realised that my 2.4.1 upgrade removed the patch I made to distutils to use the Microsoft free toolchain. unfortunately www.vrplumber.com appears to be down. Does anyone reading this have the details? regards Steve -- Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC www.holdenweb.com PyCon TX 2006 www.python.org/pycon/