>I'm just starting another session of vfp. The errors are expected and trapped when I attempt to open the already in use resource file. I have 3 resource files for 3 sessions. my vfp is local. -jack

One thing I'm still unclear on:
Is this for starting up multiple copies of an application, or for starting up multiple copies for development purposes?

For an application, it sounds OK to do it the way you are doing it. For development, I would use separate shortcuts, but you could even use your "find an unused resource" code as the startup command, too. Do you create additional resource files if ALL are in use, or do you just exit if that's the case? I'm just curious on this point.