hi tye

thanks for ur help.....
regLastError() did indeed report a more meaningful error being

Access Denied

I had wanted the script to read one of the sub keys in LMachine/Software but proper permissions (full control)were set for the sub keys ONLY
thus when the script tried to read LMachine/Software it said access denied.

Subsequently I made the script read the subkey directly
<code>$swKey= $Registry->{"LMachine/Software/Subkey1/Subkey2/"}<code>
and this solved the problem..

thanks again for all ur help guys...