couple of things to check.
>>1. Are you sharing the data with VFP8 or is it a separate dataset. I seem to remember a problem with sharing the same data between VFP8 & VFP9

we dont share data between vfp8 and vfp9 apps as such but we just have vfp8 runtime files exist in the same directory as vfp9

>>2. There are differences in VFP9 with Indexes See : Considerations for Creating Index Expressions in VFP9 help

ok .will have a look

>>3. Is the virus scanner excluded from the VFP9 dataset & the VFP9 Program directory.
first thing we checked and we excluded all above files and saw difference but still slower than vfp8 !

>>4. I remember some time ago where upgrade performance issues were overcome by recreating the tables in VFP9 then copying them back, probably had something to do with item 2.

will try this one.

>interestingly in develop the screen run normally but slowness only happens in runtime!

>>Is the dev local or networked, is the runtime networked.

its local