Dei,

Thanks for the reply. I'll try installing IIS7 first and see if that makes a difference; i the meantime I have real work that I need to do!

Cheers,
David.

>I've been forced to use the Express version because I cannot get the Standard Edition of 2005 to install on Vista Ultimate.

See this link:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1002816&SiteID=1

I only scanned this, but SP2 appears to be supported on Vista, but of course, you need to install the release version prior to sp2. Root issue appears to be IIS7 must be installed.

Del