>yeah, seems to be the length of the path to my exe that created the problem.
>
>this works: s:\data\temp\imwin\imsp.exe
>this doesn't: s:\data\temp\imnetse\imwin\imsp.exe
>
>don't know what the critical point was but thanks for the pointer.

You're welcome. I find it hard to believe, however, that 35 characters was too long. I dragged out a copy of the Windows 3.1 SDK, and checked the WinExec() function. Strangely, it doesn't show 24 among the error numbers. I'm assuming that the limitation, therefore, must be placed by Win32.