>We recently installed Netware 5.0 on a new server, and I'm finding that while running VFP 6.0 SP3 I get intermittently kicked off the server. (My connection gets dropped.) Has anyone else experienced this? When it happens either I can't access a file or my database becomes corrupted. It's very frustrating.

In all probability, it's a problem with the NetWare Client32 configuration rather than NetWare 5.0; I've had considerable trouble with Client32. If you don't need all the niceties of Novell's Client32, I've had considerably better results with the Microsoft Client for Netware (albeit, the performance is not as good as Client32). In my own company, we made the decision that NDS was not a significant factor, and went to 3.20 to get Y2K compliance and stayed with the 3.x environment and MS Client, with excellent results. The decision for us, with only 2 netware servers and the intent to move all our servers to NT within the next 18 months in any case and use NT's Active Directory instead, was probably correct. In larger organization with a complex distributed network environment, NDS is a good thing, and in that case, it's necessary for the network administration people to get involved in setting standrds for the workstation and NDS configuration to prevent timeout-based disconnects and to set Client32 options properly and consistently, since only one incorrectly configured workstation can screw things up pretty thoroughly.

There are a number of entries about database applications and problems with NetWare and Client32; you might try Novell's website to reference their knowledge base; I'm not a CNE, and have limited exposure to administering NetWare 5 systems, so I can't adequatrely give you guidance as to how to configure your sever or what needs to be done in terms of protocol handling.