I have configured axis and Java environment no problems.

A wsdl file has been provided with which I want to use the utility to generate the Java stubs and classes with which to test against.
However when running the utilty against the wsdl file I get the following error:-

java.net.MalformedURLException: no protocol: AccountingIF.wsdl

Below is the relevant sections from the wsdl document :-
<wsdl:portType name="AccountingIF">
<wsdl:operation name="getAccountingResponse" parameterOrder="req">
<wsdl:input name="getAccountingResponseRequest" message="impl:getAccountingResponseRequest"/>
<wsdl:output name="getAccountingResponseResponse" message="impl:getAccountingResponseResponse"/>
</wsdl:operation>
</wsdl:portType>
<wsdl:binding name="AccountingIFSoapBinding" type="impl:AccountingIF">
<wsdlsoap:binding style="rpc" transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http"/>
<wsdl:operation name="getAccountingResponse">
<wsdlsoap:operation soapAction=""/>
<wsdl:input name="getAccountingResponseRequest">
<wsdlsoap:body use="encoded" encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://external.aaa.base.vas"/>
</wsdl:input>
<wsdl:output name="getAccountingResponseResponse">
<wsdlsoap:body use="encoded" encodingStyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" namespace="http://external.aaa.base.vas"/>
</wsdl:output>
</wsdl:operation>
</wsdl:binding>
<wsdl:service name="AccountingIFService">
<wsdl:port name="AccountingIF" binding="impl:AccountingIFSoapBinding">
<wsdlsoap:address location="http://localhost:8080/axis/services/AccountingIF"/>
</wsdl:port>
</wsdl:service>

I am running with the command :-
java org.apache.axis.wsdl.WSDL2Java AccountingIF.wsdl

as per the document on the apache site.

Many thanks in advance to anyone with wizdom to share.

Maybe it is because of a namespace declaration shown by you? Maybe you put some wrong URL in a xmlns:something declaration and java2wsdl is failing to parse it

Thanks for some feedback. Just out of interest the namespace declarations being used are:-

<wsdl:definitions targetNamespace="http://external.aaa.base.vas"
xmlns:impl="http://external.aaa.base.vas"
xmlns:intf="http://external.aaa.base.vas"
xmlns:apachesoap="http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap"
xmlns:wsdlsoap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/"
xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:tns2="http://beans.external.aaa.base.vas"
xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/"
xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/">

Any other thoughts ?