What the code does, (at least, what it's supposed to do) is use winsock to connect to the web server. Then it sends an HTTP request header to the server, requesting the page found in path "/index.htm", so if the page was http://www.somesite.com/thisthing/my.txt, then that part would be "/thisthing/my.txt". Then, what the web site does, it check for that file. If the file does not exist, the first line that it responds with, is a 404 (in the response header). So, the code checks for a 404 on the first line returned. What you could consider doing, is doing a msgbox on parts(0) right by the if instr(1, parts(0), "404") line (just above it), and see what it's actual line is.