Hi Glenn, Thanks for the pointer. I was able to resolve the issue for my office machine by removing the 3rd-party winsock component. I will have to try the same thing on my home machine tonight and report back the results. It turned out to be a winsock installed by my company's VPN, NetScreen/Neoteris, that was causing the problem for Ruby. The solution I did was using "install/remove LSP" provided by NetScreen to remove it. The NetScrere LSP remove program says you can use it if Internet connection is not working, so I assume the VPN will work without it. I will have to try it on my XP machine at home, and hopefully it will resolve the Ruby issue and my VPN will continue working. There's a MS KB at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811259 that shows you how to verify your winsock with "msinfo32" if anyone is interested. Thanks the help from everyone, Barry