Thanks all.

I am not sorted out but I will give my initial feedback as I am too tired to try to do any more trouble shooting right now.

I have tried Sygate and it does look to be the program I was looking for and I have managed to connect to Paltalk and everything else on my machine (the server) without problems.

It seems to allow a user the choice of using thier services or not which is great for my needs and desire to be able to run stand alone although I have yet to prove it.

I love the way that this product lets the client know that the server is dialing out - a big plus in my circumstances and their sort of "network neighborhood" which tells you what is connected and details the basic TCP/IP settings.

Now for the bad news... the client does not work and I think it has to do with the TCP/IP settings - the DNS and Gateway settings show as 0.0.0.0 where I have them set to point to the server computer.

The package looks very worthwhile to me and I will try to figure this one out and I am encouraged further by a positive reccomendation - helps a lot when you are struggling, trying to work out what works and what doesn't, have various software options to consider, etc. - big thanks to JP for that!

Jon