Jon, When you posted the version of the xerces compiler you were using ***xerces 1.3.1***, that solved my problem. Here's the link guys: http://xml.apache.org/dist/xerces-j/ Get xerces1.3.1.zip from the link above and do like Jon said in his original message. Remove the other XML parsers from your classpath (I had JAXP mucking things up), then get xerces.jar out of the zip file that you download, and place it in the Tomcat/lib directory. Make sure to update catalina.bat in Tomcat/bin to setup your runtime classpath. Mine looks like: set CP=%CATALINA_HOME%\bin\bootstrap.jar;c: \tomcat\lib\xerces.jar;%JAVA_HOME%\lib\tools.jar;c: \tomcat\webapps\struts-example\WEB-INF;c: \tomcat\webapps\struts-example\WEB-INF\lib\struts.jar Thanks! Brian p.s. Woohoo!!! "Jon Brisbin" <brisbin@ipa. To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> net> cc: "Chuck Amadi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Baisc q 2 Cannot find message resources u/key - 07/24/2001 10:02 AM Please respond to struts-user > Hi, there only promlem is that i am not running tomcat 4. i know that... :-) ok...let's try this worded a different way: the problem is an xml parser issue, as this question has come up a lot lately and i got my own servlet container to work by carefully analyzing where and when my xml parsers were getting loaded... your solution will *obviously* be different, but the problem seems to come from classloading of xml parsers...you'll of course need to look through your lib directories and make sure no other jaxp or crimson parsers are there, replacing them with xerces 1.3.1 (1.4.1 will also give some issues with some containers, specifically tomcat)... i was only using my solution as an *example* of how everyone having this problem can analyze their own servlet container to help fix the problem. i was getting pretty irritated because NO ONE was helping me fix this problem, or even offering constructive advice on the deeper issue i knew it had to be...one deeper than just making sure my config files were accurate... it's something worth trying, anyway... jb