>Thanks Sergey; Really appreciate your help.
>
>But, The code you suggest ALSO locks up the computer (if not at the first try, but definitely on the second). Thus, both code samples totally lock up window and force a COLD BOOT to recover. It happens after it dials and the port is being CLOSED.
>
>I am wondering what could be causing such a hard crash (in XP of all things) ?

I don't have WIndows XP to test but it works w/o problem under Win2KSp3.