Thanks very much indeed - moving the includes to the top of the list did the trick. Maybe in years to come I'll understand exactly what the linker is doing, when & why.... And thanks for all the other tips. I'm only using LPDIRECTDRAW4 because I'm cutting and pasting samples from an old Andre Lamothe book (Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus). I'll try updating it and thanks too for the link.:-D