sorry, by ages I mean 5 mins but it should only take a fraction of a second to do this surely???? I've just tried it on another networked workstation and it is the same delay on 'loading personal settings' then applying personal settings'

Thanks for the above but they don't seem to be for my particular need. What I've done so far is to create a folder on the server called 'users' in which there are a number of folders with exactly the same name as the user name with permissions set so that only the user and the admin can have full access.......NO PROBLEM I thought because it all worked........BUT the trouble is that you have to navigate to that folder in XP when you want to save or open something in it and that means clicking numerous times.........NO PROBLEM I thought........I'll just map a drive letter to the folder..........BUT.....when you log on with another user the mapped drive doesn't exist or when you log on to a different workststion the mapped drive doesn't exist!!!!!............HELP!!!!

I'd tear my hair out but I haven't got much left!!