Naturally I had been checking the firewall as well. I first started fiddling about with it before I remembered there is a simpler way of doing this. 

Switched off the firewall and it had effect whatsoever. 

Same error message. 

Contacted Support but in both the Poser support and the Renderosity Support, there has been nothing yet. 

And today I wrote to Ken as well, since I bought 6 scripts and would rather like to be able use them. 

This situation with Poser makes me want to scream.  

nb. Just noticed that all my SnarlyGribbly scripts are missing, including the library of HDRIs, settings and the EZskin presets. At this point, it is enough to just close the app
and give it all up.