forgive me if i miss the obvious, but the below is, i think, the same as: if (head($in{"site"}) && !$in{"backit"}) { ... } and i can't deduce any 'gut code' from that from which i might retrieve the error... so maybe you can post what worked before and what doesnt now? regards, Jos Boumans > I've written a program that checks for the existence of a website by > retrieving an HTTP header when fed a URL. It works beautifully on my server > (NT running Windows '98) but locks when I installed it on my client's server > (NT running Windows 2000). The important guts of the code are: > > use LWP::Simple; > use CGI; > CGI::ReadParse(*in); > > #etc. > $url1 = $in{"site"}; > if (!$in{"backit"}){ > $base_url=$url1; > $test=head($base_url); > } > > if ($test && !$in{"backit"}) {