I have a problem on one of my user sites which has been going on for months and I can't get near it!

Intermittently, about once or twice a month, the users try to enter the system first thing in the morning and are met with the error message 'Index does not match database, recreate index (etc)' and we are forced to restore the previous days backup of the file (much quicker than reindexing 200,000 records on a network).

It is always exactly the same file which reports being damaged. In the sequence of files being opened, this is the 18th file that gets opened.

For many weeks I thought it must be a bug in my nightly cleanup routine with gets rid of blank records, packs and reindexes all the files etc. So I spent many futile hours trying to recreate the condition. Then the users admitted that invariably the problem doesn't occur very first thing but only after they've been in for half an hour and have already run that day's automatic picking list. So then I turned my attention to the picking list routine and again could never recreate the problem.

This week its happened twice. Once after the picking list and once before. But now I've managed to get the users to keep better track of the sequence of events. It isn't helping! Monday morning the problem occurred immediately after one workstation reported a 'low virtual memory' problem and had to be rebooted before it could get into the application. (Note: They had not managed to enter the app before the low memory warning.) On successfully entering the app, bang! The index appears to have spontaneously corrupted itself and no-one else could continue till we replaced the offended file.

Today, one user got in with no problem and was happily beavering away but the second user trying to get in got the corrupt index warning, after which the first user could no longer access the injured area. On this occasion no events, unusual messages or system warnings appeared on any workstations or the server. And the workstation on which the error first surfaces has been different nearly every time.

Has anyone got any suggestions as to how I can at least narrow down the possibilities?

The system consists of a dozen Win98 workstations. all with a minimum of 64 MB of RAM and all with well over 500 Mb of free space on their local hard drives. The Network is Novell 4.11 running on a PC Server with 512 Mb Ram and a SCSI drive. The Network cards are all Kingston KNE110TX 10/100s and its running through a 16 port hub.

The tables are all FP2.6 free tables.

Any inspiration will be gratefully received!

Thanks

Harry