Paul It appears you have connect on demand selected in your internet connection goto settings - Network and dial-up connections - open your dial-up connection for your ISP (named whatever you named it) right click for properties and on connection tab select don't dial the internet (or whatever the wording is) Then whenever you need to connect to the net connect via the dial-up connection hope this solves your problem Bob Stout Hi I have just started using windows 2000 and in outlook 2000 anytime i attempt to open a html email it loads up the dial-up connection. I have disabled the preview pain and still no luck. In windows 98, this would happen on the first event of opening the email but wouldn't do so after this on the same email or any subsequent html emails. It is very annoying and i don't know how to stop it from doing this. Any suggestions with many thanks, Paul. Curious about the people moderating your messages? Visit our staff web site: http://freepctech.com/staff.shtml