Hi bernard

Many thanks for your reply to my plea FOR HELP.

as a "non-techy" I have always been advised to avoid messing with the registry unless you really know what you are doing.

I don't and have never done so. Therefore I am a liitle nervous about this fix. I am thinking about it.

This leads me to a question raised in my mind. Does this mean that it is Vista back-up that has the problem and not the external drive itself??

Cheers

MikeL2