Hello Neil, thanks very much for the time you have spent on this , your last code certainly hooks up the Events but for some reason the Load ( in the ListView ) doesn't seem to work - although it does fire, it might be easier if I explain exactly what I'm trying to achieve here. I have a ListView class which has a couple of methods for Serializing and Deserializing the column headers ( widths to be exact ) , the way I currently hook into these is from the constructor(s) of my forms - this works perfectly, however , I thought it much cleaner ( and I don't have to remember to do it ) if the ListView class took care of itself - hence this thread. Bottom line is, if I place this code in my form constructor:

public frmPKForm()
{
    InitializeComponent();
    this.Load += new EventHandler(this.lv.RestoreColumnData);
    this.Closing +=new CancelEventHandler(this.lv.SaveColumnData);
}

it works, if I try everything you have suggested it doesn't ( although the Serialized file is created !!! ) I'm at a loss !, once again many thanks for your efforts