I'm sure you are right - everytime I run that ascpect of the application I hold my breath in case it chokes.

However, I am not aware of any other memory management that I should be doing explicitly, so I would tend to expect FoxPro to take care of these issues, and if it doesn't then something is not behaving as advertised. There is a 3rd party MailSlot OCX from MH Software involved - it is _very_ busy at the point of these breakdowns - but it appears to continue functioning normally despite the UI being totally bogged down. Do OCXs have a sensitivity to shrinking memory resources ?

>>It always seems to be my lot to be the discenting voice, but, I limited the size of the variable and now the app runs like a treat - I know that is circumstantial evidence at best, but it sure makes me suspicious. Thanks again for all your replies.
>>
>>Gerry.
>Gerry,
>
>I never meant to say that the large variable wasn't involved in your problem, but that the size limit of the variable is not *the* problem. The problem was most likely memory allocation related and limiting the size of your variable has successfully masked that problem for now. The problem may or may not come back again later, and if it should it may show up in a completely different part of the application.