Thank you both for your help. I discovered what the problem was (after sitting on it a couple of days):

I was trying to create the VSS database on M. But M was actually a directory on VOL1, ie (M=\\VOL1\DATA\PROGRAM\). That is when it gave me the problem. I just tried creating the database instead on a mapping to a drive and typing the path, (G=VOL1) G:\DATA\PROGRAM\ and it worked fine. So there must be some issue with using a mapping to a directory rather than a drive with VSS. I suppose if I understood Novell better I might not have had this problem...

But thank you both for helping me.

Bill