Hi Marcin,
Thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately I can't act on it as I work in an organisation where individual users do not have the required "admin rights" to change firewall access. I have raised this with our centralised IT department.
When I open up the Python IDLE "shell" the text below always appears. Most of the time I don't have a problem running scripts. Only occasionally do I get the error which I don't think is anything to do with the script itself (e.g. today I couldn't even open any scripts as I couldn't get beyond the error messages previously posted). This suggests that it might be an "environment" problem, but as I mentioned, I can't find any way round it other than a PC restart.
I guess I'll have to see what our internal IT department suggest unless you have any other suggestions?
Best wishes,
Steve
Python 2.6.5 (r265:79096, Mar 19 2010, 21:48:26) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license()" for more information.
****************************************************************
Personal firewall software may warn about the connection IDLE
makes to its subprocess using this computer's internal loopback
interface. This connection is not visible on any external
interface and no data is sent to or received from the Internet.
****************************************************************
IDLE 2.6.5
>>>