>I have been investigating a site that is showing poor performance on data read/write, but basically whole system does not perform well.
>
>EXE is local to workstation as are all graphics files and virtually everything other than DBC/DBF etc., server is 2003 SBS, SMB2 is disabled, current workstation I am testing is Vista but issue is also present on Windows 7 pcs. All data is loaded using SELECT sql commands into cursors NOFILTER (temp folder is on local workstation).

Sounds basically sound - dbc copied to local is usually faster due to no locking on server,
but inside server data dictionary eliminates many pathing hassles.
Effect is larger if dbfs are routinely closed again.

>
>What I have discoverred today is that if I set up side by side installs, one to the "Live" data being accessed by 15 or so users, and one to a test data folder (on save server, same drive) my test data loads significantly faster.

Might be oplocking not disabled: caches the single user PC somewhat.
>
>Is there a server setting limiting folder access? I thought VFP tables had no access limits? there should be no record locking going on as this is simply a data load at this point.
>Any ideas what could cause this?

If the path to the data folder is last / after nonexisting paths,
loading from there might be slower compared to loading test from the first entry in the path list.
Compare times on the normal data path when no other user is logged in
Again, effect is larger if dbfs are routinely closed again.

Fragmented real data might be slower than unfragmented test data created by copy.

HTH

thomas