Thanks to all.. Compression seemed to work fine Building configuration... Compressed configuration from 143550 bytes to 24461 bytes[OK] I also found a page http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/software/ios120/12cgcr/fun_c/fcprt2/fcreboot.htm#xtocid114474 which includes the config command "boot config <file>" which seems to permanently change the location of the config file. I didn't try this