Hi Joe Well the good news is that the 678 message seems to have been a temporary problem and I have not had any problems with my internet connection since yesterday.I am on ADSL Speed 3.0Mbps.Also I found a microsoft fix for the GENERIC HOST problem here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894391 but this has not stopped the error being displayed on start up of pc,the problem first occured after combofix scan and my pc came preloaded from Dell with XP installed so I do not have an installation disk.Thanks for your time..