I agree with Michael about letting LISTSERV do the updates, however, if you have a reason for doing them offline, I suggest the following. Put BITEARN NODES on a disk belonging to someone else (In my case, It's one of my own) and give LISTSERV a read/only link. Update the files on the disk from the other id and then just do a TELL LISTSERV STOP REBOOT And it's done. Harold