>I've installed the servicepack
>
>Besides some Activex changes (i didn't have SP 1 installed yet) nothing was changed (not VFP6.exe nor the runtime library)
>
>It seems to be 'll have just to watch and wait for a solution to the C000005 error.
>
>I'm wondering what progress the VFP team has made regarding this subject

Which C0000005 problem? The error is a memory management error, where something in VFP causes a memory access violation, either by referencing a non-existant memory location, or a location owned by something other than VFP that wasn't explicitly shared to VFP. If you want to create one, just download my CLSHEAP.ZIP and use the SetMem function, with a random integer in the range of 1 - 2^31 for the first argument, and a random character string for the second. The odds are very good you'll create a C0000005 error. If you're lucky.

There is no universal solution for C0000005 errors, any more than there was a generic GPF fix. It's indicative of a problem, but the solution isn;t the same for all the problems that report that error.

There are several things that cause C0000005 errors that have workarounds; the first is the problem of C0000005 errors on termination where SCREEN = OFF was in CONFIG.FPW and a top-level (or the main VFP screen) is made visible. The workaround: Install DCOM components on the system if you find that HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\OLE doesn't have an EnableDCOM registry value. You install DCOM from the appropriate source (DCOM95 on WIn95 boxes, DCOM98 on any Win9x box, NT 4.0 SP3 or SP4, or IE 4.01 on any of the platforms) to load some component that VFP expects to use during its shutdown process. Exactly which component it is I'm not certain; that's something that I'd expect MS to address, but for the moment, this works.

Another problem is a C0000005 error begins to happen whenever the debugger is launched. The solution - clean out the Watch Window values stored in the FOXUSER file to make sure that the debugger doesn't load whatever condition or code triggers the C0000005 error in your current environment, whether it's a corrupted entry, or a function call or ActiveX server reference that can't be resolved, where the Watch Window tries to evaluate the expression between instruction executions.

Other problems have been linked to illegal values in Load methods of classes, some driver issues, software conflicts, hardware errors, and my personal favorite, the programmer headspace error.

On a less cynical note, it'd be nice if the VFP team could address a bit of bulletproofing to fix the most common causes, and if someone did an official compendium of errors and workarounds. It takes time and some coordination of the VFP community, on both sides of the product fence. I think that MS is going to do a Knowledge Base article on the DCOM component issue, hopefully both how to recognize the problem, and what to do about it.