>I have a config.fpw included with the exe as a text file in the project/other section. In the exe I have a function that needs to read the content of another disk file, in a different folder. The disk file happens to be named config.fpw as well, yet VFP functions (FILE(), FREAD(), etc) keep reading the content of the config.fpw file from the exe, even though I pass the file name with the complete path.
>There must be a way to force VFP to read the file from disk, right? TIA

Besides the other solutions you could use the WSH ActiveX control or even the Windows API of OpenFile, ReadFile. The WSH ActiveX control might now always be installed but the Windows API should always work.