Oh, and by the way, I'm not dead. Its just my IM link that is. For some strange reason, since my trip to Lisbon last week, I just can't connect to any IM. Tried everything - fondling the XP personal firewall settings, running heavy duty diagnostic tools (by the way, hcp://system/netdiag/dglogs.htm is not a bad start). Nothing. Can't connect, and don't get any error msg. I feel so isolated!!