Thanks to everyone for their ideas and suggestions relating to problems with Windows XP on my VPC on my Al-book. In the end, I bit the bullet and created a new PC in VPC, and installed Windows XP SR1. Now it is working perfectly. VPC additions installed without problem. All Mac/PC interface operations (eg drag and drop) seem to be perfect. I have done nothing at the Mac OS or the VPC level, so this seems to suggest that all the strange behaviours were coming from the Windows XP (for some unknown reason). I am just glad I do not have to use this Windows XP environment more than occasionally. regards, Trevor