FYI, The problem is now solved. Because I'm fairly new to this stuff, I made the terrible mistake of trying to run my first Perl / SQL script from an editor. Big mistake. If any of you out there have had this problem (Can't Create IP Socket) then I suggest you do the following.... 1. Make sure Perl and mYSQL are installed in the default location on C:\mySQL and c:\Perl. 2. Make sure you have loaded the DBI / DBD-mySQL modules for Perl (using the PPM INSTALL utility). Also make sure you're not having firewall interruption. 3. If you've done all this and you still get a socket IP thing coming up, make sure you've tested your perl script from the command prompt. Do this by typing "Perl PROGRAMNAME". If you are using an editor, it may not give the same results as running from command prompt (DZ Perl Editor v3 for instance, will give the IP socket error testing under Windows 2000, but not Windows 98). Right. Thanks for your input guys. Now all I gotta do is learn mySQL. Damnit. JT p.s. Thanks to CTB and HERO from DevShed for also suggesting many things.