By golly, I see it now. Somehow in my "Googling" the subject I was led down the wrong path. Now when "Googling" xPath and xmlnamespacemanager I find numerous references to this exact issue.
eg. http://blog.zygonia.net/PermaLink,guid,3c02a284-ab1f-4ff5-84a5-349155248c9e.aspx

"My Bad"

Thanks for the correction. I got documentation and advice mixed up.

Glenn

>Hi,
>
>The behaviour is documented. See the Remarks section at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/h0hw012b.aspx
>Regards,
>Viv
>
>>Terrific! It now works like a charm. Once again the documentation had me all buggered up. Thanks for the correction and I am in your debt.
>>
>>Glenn
>>
>>>>I have an xml file as follows:

>>>><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:openSearch="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/" xmlns:gbs="http://schemas.google.com/books/2008" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/terms" xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005">
>>>>  <id>http://www.google.com/books/feeds/volumes</id>
>>>>  <updated>2008-12-16T20:16:35.000Z</updated>
>>>>  <entry>
>>>>    <title type="text">Beginning SQL Server 2000 Programming</title>
>>>>    <gbs:embeddability value="http://schemas.google.com/books/2008#not_embeddable" />
>>>>    <gbs:openAccess value="http://schemas.google.com/books/2008#disabled" />
>>>>    <dc:creator>Robin Dewson</dc:creator>
>>>>    <dc:date>2003-08-27</dc:date>
>>>>    <dc:description>By the end of this book, youll have a firm grasp of the most important SQL Serverfeatures and be able to develop your own effective database solutions.</dc:description>
>>>>    <dc:format>792 pages</dc:format>
>>>>    <dc:identifier>ISBN:1590592522</dc:identifier>
>>>>    <dc:identifier>ISBN:9781590592526</dc:identifier>
>>>>    <dc:title>Beginning SQL Server 2000 Programming</dc:title>
>>>>  </entry>
>>>></feed>
>>>>

>>>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>Don't use String.Empty - see changes:
>>>
>>>>and the following code

>>>        Dim xd As New XmlDocument
>>>        xd.Load(MapPath("") + "/xml.xml")
>>>        Dim nsmgr As XmlNamespaceManager = New XmlNamespaceManager(xd.NameTable)
>>>        nsmgr.AddNamespace("xx", "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom")
>>>        nsmgr.AddNamespace("openSearch", "http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/")
>>>        nsmgr.AddNamespace("gbs", "http://schemas.google.com/books/2008")
>>>        nsmgr.AddNamespace("dc", "http://purl.org/dc/terms")
>>>        nsmgr.AddNamespace("gd", "http://schemas.google.com/g/2005")
>>>       Dim oroot As XmlNode = xd.FirstChild
>>>       Dim oEntry As XmlNode = oroot.SelectSingleNode("xx:entry",nsMgr)
>>>

>>>>
>>>>oEntry is null
>>>>
>>>>Please help I don't seem to know what I am doing any more!!!