Thanks for the suggestion. I don't have any monitoring software going. I've scoured the startup stuff via "hijackthis" and made sure I don't have anything running in the background that's not regular core windows junk.

Programming with the laptop fails instantly over and over until, oftern after about 30-40 tries it will "hit" and go on and program. It reads sucessfully every time, never fails. And it erases every time, too (set to erase before program), also never fails. Only the write fails and it appears to do so the instant it gets going. I guess 0000 is the first plae it tries and that is thus the error message.

Melabs told me a timing change to make in the 628A file. Haven't had time to try it yet.