Having successfully relied upon pkzip for many years to zip and unzip files in a DOS window under FPD26, FPW26 & VFP3, I have now found a windows zipping product (Norton WINNT Tools symapexp.exe) that runs very well using the "! /N1" run command from either the command window or in a program. Problem is that some of the subject zipped files are so large (several hundred megabits) that VFP3, on this present system, doesn't want to hang about while its next table file is unzipped for it to act upon; oh, no... it just says '... what, my "File Access Denied", well I'll just stop working then..' <g>. So any good ideas, other than including a pre-fixed timer looping solution to time out a "WAIT" to hold VFP for the unzip process to finish before it goes galloping along? Some of the files a relatively small so a timer solution in a proces involving many files really drags out the whole process and time is of the essence [pun intended :))]. Thnx Gang. /psb.