Hi Peter. Thanks for your reply. Yes, SettingsEAOImpl is being packaged in the ear, and yes its jar file is included in the application.xml listing. Have also eliminated the JDK version as a source of the problem. Re-built and re-de-depolyed and got the same error. By the way, I thought I'd point out that there's nothing particularly wrong or strange about the class SettingsEAOImpl... just happens to be the first one in that winstant_ejb jar. Following my initial post, I have since discovered that the ear that I am generating (Eclipse JEE Europa 3.3.1.1) gives the same error when deployed on another pc, whereas the ear file from a colleague's machine works fine on mine. This led me to believe that there is something wrong with my Eclipse or Ant installations, both of which are next on my list of potential causes of the problem. Thanks again Peter, and would appreciate any other suggestions/opinions/advice that you or anyone else here can come up with. Regards, Les View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4108646#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...