  The ROSAT PSPC pulse height spectrum of the peculiar He-rich hot white dwarf
KPD 0005+5106 provided a great surprise when first analysed by Fleming, Werner
& Barstow (1993). It defied the best non-LTE modelling attempts in terms of
photospheric emission from He-dominated atmospheres including C, N and O and
was instead interpreted as the first evidence for a coronal plasma around a
white dwarf. We show here that a recent high resolution Chandra LETGS spectrum
has more structure than expected from a thermal bremsstrahlung continuum and
lacks the narrow lines of H-like and He-like C expected from a coronal plasma.
Moreover, a coronal model requires a total luminosity more than two orders of
magnitude larger than that of the star itself. Instead, the observed 20-80 AA
flux is consistent with photospheric models containing trace amounts of heavier
elements such as Fe. The soft X-ray flux is highly sensitive to the adopted
metal abundance and provides a metal abundance diagnostic. The weak X-ray
emission at 1 keV announced by O'Dwyer et al (2003) instead cannot arise from
the photosphere and requires alternative explanations. We echo earlier
speculation that such emission arises in a shocked wind. Despite the presence
of UV-optical O VIII lines from transitions between levels n=7-10, no X-ray O
VIII Ly alpha flux is detected. We show that O VIII Lyman photons can be
trapped by resonant scattering within the emitting plasma and destroyed by
photoelectric absorption.
