>I was wondering if there is a better way for detecting the presence of the LAN (Local Area Network)?
>
>The following is what I am using right now to detect whether or not a certain drive letter, folder and subfolder exist.
>
>

>* Detect the presence of the network.
>IF DIRECTORY("E:\MSDS\DATA")
>  oApp.NetworkPresent=.T.
>ELSE
>   oApp.NetworkPresent=.F.
>ENDIF
>

That should work fine for your stated purpose. Some comments:

You could try one of the following instead:
IF DIRECTORY( "\\ServerName\ShareName\Folder\" )
* will work if the local machine has lost its E: drive mapping. In that case
* you can use WinAPI calls to re-establish the mapped drive E:
* Or, you can change your app to use these UNC-style identifiers instead of mapped drives

* Even more "reliable" is
IF DIRECTORY( "\\192.168.xxx.xxx\ShareName\Folder\" )
* Since you're specifying a fixed IP address this should work
* even if there are NetBIOS or DNS problems (e.g. DNS configuration, Browse Master, WINS) on your network
* If this works where checking a drive letter does not, it's useful information
* for network troubleshooting

Another comment about the drive letter E: you've chosen:

- most computers these days have a C: hard drive and a D: optical drive
- therefore, nominally the next available drive letter is E:

However, if you do this it can cause problems with USB memory sticks or hard drives the user may want to attach to the workstation. When they do so the stick or HD will by default be mapped as drive E:, which will then be inaccessible because a network drive mapping has already overridden it.

For this reason it's better to start mapped network drives further down the alphabet, leaving some space for more local devices. Some admins start network drive mappings at Z: and work backwards from there.