PHP attempting to parse non-existent files

okay, I'll try again. The apache server our site runs on is set up to parse .html files as php. If you pass a url of a non-existant file to the server the client gets a php parse error back rather than a 404 error ... specifically: pass in http://www.sitename/fred.html and you get Fatal error: Unable to open e:\program files\apache group\apache\htdocs\dev\maintenance\fred.html in Unknown on line 0 pass in http://www.sitename/fred.htm (which apache hasn't been told to treat as PHP) and you get the expected 404 error which I am well aware can be trapped in apache. (n.b. http://www.sitename/bill/fred.html where bill is a non existant directory, gives the 404 error okay) Either this happens to everyone (which apparently it doesn't) or I've got the configuration wrong somewhere in Apache or PHP. I've trawled through the on-line documentation for both and haven't found anything relevant. I'm a programmer not a network or web administrator, but here I'm all there is. Any ideas what and/or where the problem is? Tim Ward Senior Systems Engineer Please refer to the following disclaimer in respect of this message: http://www.stivesdirect.com/e-mail-disclaimer.html