I've found a few minor issues with the Boost::Serialization in VS2005. -C++ Exceptions are set to Yes (/EHsc) and the boost library isn't automatically detecting this. I had to manually declare _CPPUNWIND in the preprocessor. -I needed to add #pragma warning(disable:4267) to collections_save_imp.hpp to get rid of warnings due to unsigned int count = s.size(); (containers use size_t as their size, not an unsigned int. Could be trouble in 64-bit world with really large containers). -I had to #define _SCL_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS 1 , as otherwise I get warning C4996 from compat_traits_type::copy(newptr, oldptr, prev_size); in alt_sstream_impl.hpp -The tutorial says to use ar & |boost::serialization::base_object<bus_stop>(*this); to save the base class. This doesn't work when saving XML, as the |BOOST_SERIALIZATION_NVP macro blows up because : is not a valid file character. I ended up doing |bus_stop |&bsbase = dynamic_cast<bus_stop_corner&> (*this); ar & bsbase to save the base class. I'm not sure if BOOST_SERIALIZATION_NVP also has issues with a dereferenced pointer, as I didn't try but I suspect it may (BOOST_SERIALIZATION_NVP(*this)) for example. -In MFC serialization it is common to do the following bus_stop bs; archive << &bs; bus_stop *pbs = NULL; archive >> pbs the MFC CArchive automatically allocates the memory when archiving back a pointer. Using boost, I was getting no warnings, no errors, and it was a very difficult bug to track down because the only error I would get would be an exit code 3 from one of my threads. The tutorial should document this, and ideally boost::serialization should either give a warning or an error if the user tries to do this. Thanks, let me know if you need any more info or have any questions. Drew Hohmann Software Engineer drew@med-associates.com