Ozzy, I downloaded a copy of the BloodShed C++ like you talked about, but it won't even compile what was stable with Visual C++. For some reason, code that works fine with Visual C++ generates 30+ errors, not warnings, with BloodShed. That being said, I went back to visual C++ (I think the Trillian designers wanted it done with VC++ anyways). Any ideas on why fstream.h does not seem to load as a header file? Every other header I have used without problem, and I made sure this one was explicitly looked for on compile and I can look at the file in the \lib directory... So frustrating.