hehehe - i feel i BIT better now thanks again - it all works a treat.

I decided to rewrite a clucky batch file to use with Symantec Livestate Recovery - Server imaging s/w. Servers also run CA's High Availability clustering s/w, and I had to do some checks based on which was the production server, what processes are running, etc etc. Then shut down databses services on both servers and also comms agents on remote servers each night to run the images.

Kix is doing it nicely now !