Bob,

Based on what Ed R. had to say about the RAM and the caching (which I have heard as a problem elsewhere before too) you may want to *TRY* removing that exta RAM to see if the situation changes.

As you are learning, there *are* differences in how different manufacturers interpret "induistry standard". This has, and will continue to be, a long-standing problem in the PC industry. I first hit it way way back, with parallel printer cables! What it seems to come down to is a manufacturer will decide what "typical" users are 'likely' to do/use/have and will use the minimum/cheapest set of components and manufacturing techniques to deliver a product. It will work *most* of the time, but not *ALL* of the time, with everything.

Personally, I would suspect that your video capability fits that kind of logic too.

cHEERS,

Jim N

>In Response to Jim and Ed both:
>
>Thanks, and yes, I have made some changes that I thought were
>innocuous. First, I do have the machines networked, using W95/98
>networking right off the CDs. BNC Ethernet, thin and slow but
>enough for what I need, via LinkSys cards, NE2000 compatible.
>Second, on the W98 machine I did put in an extra 64Mb RAM, of
>the same type that came with the original machine. The rest of
>it is as delivered by the OEM. The W98 PC is the first one I
>tried with VFP. In my specs this morning I typo'ed the BIOS
>ID string. The BIOS date is 6/25/98, nor 6/25/63 as I typed.
>And although I've only had the machine since November, I have
>not seen any other software create this kind of behavior.
>
>The older machine is running W95, and it too scrambled the FAT,
>just when I tried to add a report to a project. Blue screen,
>the whole bit. I can see clues now when it's getting ready to blow.
>I clicked the Documents Tab in project manager today and it showed
>me the Data graphic. I saved what I had open right away, quit VFP
>and rebooted. Scandisk showed no errors and I worked again for a
>while. The same thing happened later and I took the same steps.
>I can claim that I avoided getting the drive scrambled but by the
>same logic I was also keeping the elephants away.
>
>So while I'm leery of reports, I will have to deal with them this
>week in some way. Probably by packing them into the setup files
>and not putting them in the project itself.
>
>And I will look into the motherboard issues as Ed pointed out.
>
>Danke ..
>
>-- Bob