Sergey,

That was the clue....!

I had a project window opening automatically when VFP started (it was hidden behind the command window and I could not see it). With the project being open it was effectively preventing me from opening exclusively the dbc's it contained, including sop.dbc. As soon as I closed the project window I was able to open exclusively.

Thanks
Barry

PS I have now got another problem, but will post separately :-)




>Try

>CLOSE DATABASES ALL
>OPEN DATABASE sop.dbc EXCLUSIVE
>VALIDATE DATABASE RECOVER
>

>
>>I get this message even if it is the first statement that I enter in the command window in a new VFP session.
>>
>>>You have to close DBC opened shared in order to open it exclusively.