Unfortunately the host box is a remote box outside of my company's control, with limited access. However, I think you are right that it is in the way the remote host is set up. The same code works fine against other remote hosts, but this one has had more restrictions in place than usual, I cannot ssh there, for example. I will look into getting them to attach a process monitor, but to be honest I don't think they'll play ball. Either way, thanks for the feedback, it sounds like an SSH config issue on the remote side.