Sorry about the confusion - yes I am using select to make the timeout 5s. That is the timeout I would like and that part is working fine. It is the WSACleanup that isn't quickly returning that is the problem. I am hoping there is something I can do to shutdown the connect attempt before I call WSACleanup that would stop WSACleanup from taking the remaining 15s...

Hi, Originally the issue was that connect() has a 20 second timeout in it. I switched to some code I found that makes the connect() not blocking, and I can certainly get program control back in 5 seconds, but this module needs to load and unload and I can't get it to unload without the full 20s wait because WSACleanup must wait for that original non blocking connect to complete before it releases. I've tried various linger options and calling or not calling shutdown and closesocket, but nothing makes a difference. I don't want to not call WSACleanup as I figure that might be a big deal. Is there a way to tell winsock to stop trying to connect so it doesn't wait out the 20s? Thanks, Alan