Thanks for the reply Apronk,

1. I thought of that, but since I can manually make the change to the directory, my user MUST have the proper permissions... right?

2. I have tried other folders in the program files directory with the same result.

thirdly, all the show commands work properly.

Funny thing is using the same code I can change the var to $IBM = 'c:\documents and settings\ a different users directory \ and
@error=0
@serror= the command completed successfully

I really don't get it.