TD, The Generic Host Process Errors didn't bother me initially. But after months of popping up Dr Watson started running after the error report was dispatched and gobbled up resources bringing the machine to a halt. I then started killing the Dr Watson process just after startup, but that started causing problems with hardware drivers and the like, probably because Dr Watson was part way through something when I killed it. The logs tell me that on some boots IPV6 Helper Service Failed to start and that a Generic Host Process Error occured at the time of the previous machine shutdown. Since yesterday I've done some snooping with some Sysinternals tools. I've found that ATI's Catalyst Control Centre has 2 network ports open and is listening to them all the time. This might explain why the GHP error returned with repair of the winsock setup allowing ATI to make connection and not release it on shutdown causing svchost.exe to crash on shutdown giving GHP error. I'm waiting for a response from ATI as too why they have network ports open and how to disable them from staying open. Anyone got any idea on stopping ATI opening ports Thanks again John