EvilSOB
Thank you very much for the code. Malloc works great but you were also right that was not the REAL problem but at least you did help me eleminate the issue of perhaps running out of memory. I'm sure I will find the real problem.

I am a VB programmer and relatively new in c (or lite-c) what book would you recommend (or is there a web site) to sharpen up my c knowledge?

Thanks again
Gerrit