>Last month I noted that a system that has been running without a hiccup since 2001 had a corrupted index that had the effect of making a report view OK but print incorrectly.
>
>I reindexed and packed the table last month and all was OK
>
>Same call today (this is a monthly process).
>This time reindexing and packing didn't work.
>
>I brought the data to my system and failed the same way the user failed.
>I reindexed and packed and all was OK on my system.
>Hmmm
>After several futile retries at the client, I sent my corrected .dbf and .cdx to the client and all is OK.
>
>Que pasa?

Bill,

Instead of fixing the problem can you instead try to identify the exact problem. In other words, get a corrupted file and investigate it to see what specifically is wrong with it; is it old, existing records getting damaged, newly added records, recently modified records, or only the index itself and the data is OK, etc. This is in the hope of then identifying perhaps what routine the corruption is occurring in - possibly even from what user.

Furthermore, the fact that it worked flawlessly since 2001 indicates that something in the user environment has changed. Software does not randomly start to not-work properly. There are 3 main areas to look into; (1) new anti-virus software or updates to existing AV, (2) changes in network hardware, (3) Windows patches. But since no one else has mentioned a similar problem I would look at #3 only as last option.

Also, have you scanned the hard disks at the user for corruptions or possible failures?