>>Actually, there is if you VFP app doesn't respond to the shutdown message generated by ExitWindows(), after a time, Windows will call TerminateProcess(), which is a particularly messy shutdown.
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>But it appears that your app doesn't need to do so in order to close tables? Just because your app doesn't respond to WM_SHUTDOWN doesn't mean the VFP runtime doesn't.

Decide what you like - if VFP is in a tight processor loop, doing no screen I/O, the VFP (runtime or interpreter) code that responds to Windows Messages may not receive the message. This is evidenced often by a message box coming up telling you the task is not responding, asking if you want to End Task immediately or Continue to Wait. Selecting End Task issues an immediate TerminateProcess(), and that doesn't talk to the event loop at all - it simply starts releasing resources and cancelling the TCB for the running process, killing it and all its threads and fibers, giving no chance to let them execute their shutdown code, or in the case of OLE Servers, the actions in OnFinalRelease, which causes some memory leaks that can't be recovered without a shutdown/restart.