If Any of You Guys are McAfee Users, Please be aware of the fact that Patch 11, issue 11 fixes this problem. I would love to post what exactly it does, but am prevented in doing so because of their disclaimer which states that I will be held liable for posting information of their updates onto a public internet site without written permission from them.

The Patch is part of the application update cycle and is not a DAT file. thanks for the Help. No I was not directly responsible for the anti-Virus, but was asked to assist, hence the request for information here. I had to teach myself this application in as short a time period as possible to fix the problem. i wish to thank everyone on this site for assisting. the HOSTS file is locked by a terminate and stay resident part of the application concerned. hence the machines hang. a work-around is to make the dns client in the control panel/administrative tools/services manual. thus allowing multiple instances of the HOSTS file to be opened incase a process locks it. applying the patch to the mcafee product resolves the memory leak and free's up the HOSTS file and other processor time for other instances. this is general i hope

i havent been here in ages, btw where is pooh-tsun-tzu?