1. decide to migrate to visual studio 2005 to tackle the mysterious errors. 2. how do programs handle the security and safety of private key. it looks like the current approach is: read the private key out from certificate, then use it to sign/verify or encrypt/decrypt messages. however, the ideal way is message in, certificate in, boolean variable of success out. keeping private key unreadable to anyone is the safest way!!:) 3. arrange to set up AS2 clients in company machines.