>The question is, should I develop with VFP 5 while waiting for a real patch for VFP 6, or work with VFP 6 because maybe I won't get affected by the C0000005 error?

There's a lot of variance with that error, from all the messages here. The one standard vfp6-created application runtime C000005 error can be corrected with DCOM/IE4 installation. That may be enough concern to cause you to rethink 6, or maybe not. Other than that, they're pretty much all development errors. I've been using 6 and beta-6 since May 98, and have only seen that error maybe 2 or 3 times, none recently. But others have seen plenty of them.

If you have 6, you could go ahead and start using it for a new project -- MS may have a patch for it before long, and if you do have C000005 trouble, you'll probably bump into it pretty quickly developing in 6, so can downgrade to 5 without too much lost time if need be...