Sorry to cause another fuss, I just feel pretty blind without it (like the 30 minute radar days ). I'm not sure if it is someting wrong with this laptop or the network connection. I get an error:

Cannot convert string "7x13" to font struct

Unable to load any usable fontset

I'm not sure if this is related but whenever I try to open anything, be it downloaded from the server (sdfopen ) or some control file I have saved, it scans the file and then just hangs. I suspect it is something wrong with Xming, but I don't know.

Its annoying me so much, because just when we get a cold spell, now I don't have access to any snow maps or any of the winter scripts I prepared just for this moment. 

I uninstalled and reinstalled; no effect :(

Can you install elsewhere and copy across the Xming folder? 

If I was you I'd be running it on a virtualised environment rather than the native OS. You can then snapshot it and always return to a working version.

I have a working copy of Grads on another machine (which I will have access to over the weekend), would you recommend then, that I simply copy the Xming folder onto my laptop? 

I haven't got much experience with virtual machines, but I will give it a go, although I still need to be able to get a working version on this machine. I have tried both 2.0 and 2.1, and both fail. 

You've already uninstalled and reinstalled (I only realised after posting) so it shouldn't make a difference, but nonetheless I'd give it a go.

I use VMWare Workstation but VMWare player is a free version with certain limitations around snapshots I think. My advice would be to set up a VM with Windows 7 and install the version of GRaDS you want on this. I'd also accept the default path it suggests during the install.

This is totally bizarre, I finally managed to download a file. I did it by writing this script.

'c'
'sdfopen http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov:80/dods/gfs_hd/gfs_hd20150113/gfs_hd_00z'

Also I remember this was the laptop I used last year when I had all these problems. 

The method works, and I have no idea why. It doesn't work directly into Grads, it requires a script for some reason, and even more bizarely it requires the 'c'. 

Also what is the difference between :80 and :9090, could that possibly be it (although it made no difference on my other machine). Gah this is making me think twice about installing grads 2.1 on the machine that actually works properly for fear of screwing it up, I can see why you use a virtual machine.

9090 may be blocked by your firewall by default because http is usually over 80. If I was you I'd go back to basics first and try manually downloading files to see whether you've got a security problem. 

VMs are definitely the way to go for this type of thing because you can just rollback. My PC has an SSD, 16GB ram and a 4.4Ghz i7. I use this to run various different VMs.  

I think you are right, I'm also having difficulty saving images but stuff like graphics manipulation works fine, so I recon its the security system blocking stuff. I think I'm going to give up making any more progress here, especially since I have got this far.