And do please stay around because as S J Craftec says, other people have been having this problem and sooner or later the Alwil programmers will be able to identify it and fix it. They don't usually take long:)
Just in case it's relevant, which firewall are you using? And is the XP firewall switched off? (it should be if you're using another firewall, you don't need two running).
Gillie2tat, you are very correct about running two firewalls. That's worst think you could do... same thing with running two antiviruses in the same time on the same machine (actually, only if both have resident shields running), but in case with Windows SP2 built in firewall, it really doesn't matter. You can freely enable it, and run another external firewall, that's actually, what Microsoft advise their users. Windows SP2 has just inbound protection, so having some full product sitting next to SP2 firewall is very much desired.
I run Sygate free version 5.6 with SP2 without any single problems... I know for some other people, and they also don't have any problems with it...
Cheers !
P.S. This time I really think, his problems is connected to the fact that all of them (many people with ACTSKIN4.OCX problems) runs preinstalled version of Windows...