>>At one point I was going to get serious about testing for this bug. I went as far as setting up a couple of Win7 machines, ran Brandon Harker's test code for a while but the error didn't show up. It seems to require significant load to manifest. It would be great to have a reliable test to check 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.02 and future versions.
>>
>>OTOH with free or cheap DB backends available the use cases for networked DBFs are getting fewer and fewer.
>
>SMB2 has, IMO, effectively killed the file sharing paradigm. I'd rather invest a couple of weeks to make sure my app works with the currently available DB than looking for patches to patch what Microsoft just won't.

If the bug pushes people to use DB backends, maybe MS views that internally as a feature, not a bug ...

>Specially in an area where you don't have the freedom to change the settings and be sure they won't be overwritten on next reboot/update/full moon.

Absolutely - workarounds are fragile.

>I just wonder how are the Access, Paradox, Clarion and other guys coping with this. I guess they also have their ways to hook into ODBC.

AFAIK Access has had good integration with SQL Server for at least 10 years, dunno about the other guys.