Dear Martin.
Bingo! Yes. I had not realised that new version defaults to SFTP. Setting it to SCP now allows me to change owner and group. Many thanks.

I suppose that at home you are using SCP, while you're using SFTP on the other site. Note that SFTP is the default transfer protocol since 3.5

Thanks Martin. I am connecting to the same Linux system (BTW I connect as root) now from home running WinSCP 3.3.0 Build 177 also on Windows XP Pro. This now allows me to change owner and permissions. Puzzled?

Changing of owner/group is allowed only with SCP and SFTP above version 4.
See Supported transfer protocols.

I am running latest version (3-5-6 Build 213).
I connect successfully to two systems running Mandrake 9.1
When trying to set file/diretory permissions the owner and group boxes appear greyed and cannot be changed. This does not happen before. I am running from an Windows XP computer that has a Novel client installed (problem still happens even if I dont login to a Novell tree).

Any ideas?
This does not happen at home (no Novell and I might be running an earlier version of WinSCP)

Thanks