Done at last 2.30 this morning! thanks for all your help. Kept it running for 26 hours but still only 50% compleat on building map index so stped it. went and bought some more ram the laptop ill only take 128 meg so I filled it up. then I ran defrag (another story!) set it going and 4 hours later hey presto done. So unhinged was right the problem was with the laptop NOT the GPS or Mapsouce, so a better computer would do it quicker.
Thanks again.