Deep in the mists of time I guess that the server's time was wrongly set for a short period leading to 4 transactions in the database having a later time stamp than subsequent transactions. This caused no problems in operation apart from an inability to pack and a failure in ZCatalog. As a trial I patched the errant transactions' tid to bring them back into the correct range and everything now appears to be in order, I have successfully packed and cataloged the db. Can anyone see any reason why I should not continue to run like this or is there a possibility that I have introduced a corruption which will come back to bite me......? Rick ___________________________________________________________ Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html