Mike,

A few questions -
  which box is client and which is host (for purposes of ssh)?
  On which box is the rsync program running?
  Are you using static IP addresses for both boxes?
  On the client box do you have a known_hosts file in ~/.ssh
  If you see known_hosts file type cat known_hosts while in the directory
~/.ssh do you see the line id-rsa= with a bunch of numbers and letter pairs?
  On client do you see id_rsa and id_rsa.pub in ~/.ssh?
  On the host box do you see a file named authorized_keys in ~/.ssh?


well... I'll tell you... I deleted known_hosts on the computer that will
> not rsync or ssh and ran the reset command to find no gain in the
> situation. I the tried to ssh from  the laptop and after logging in I was
> presented with a message that I needed to reboot. I did but there was no
> improvement in the situation.
>
>
>
>
-- 
James