Well chaps - I'm sure you'll all be delighted to know it's sorted now......
Took the old "chicken plucker" up to see my old "chicken plucker guru" and we spent about another four hours fumbling about with it again trying to make some sense out of it all. Overlaying the OS has cured the Spooler Subsystem application error which didn't rectify the original problem.
Seems like the reason XP kept installing a bridge was because it was seeing my dialup as a potential network connection and as it was checked as my default connection 'twould appear my network was trying to communicate to the laptop via my dialup connection - hence maybe the failed pinging attempts???
We stumbled over this as the problem by uninstalling ALL of my comms hardware and lo and behold the laptop started clucking away to the chicken plucker. Installed the modem - system ok. Set it as the default - feathers everywhere!!
Hehe!
Bobs yer diddly!
Thanks for all of your help again guys - whatever else I now consider myself MUCH more edified in the field of communications!
JEEZ! Now the question is would Gates's henchmen be interested in this little software cul-de-sac and if so how much will he reward US for this little bit of problem solving???
