I periodically reappend one of my main tables to repack it and clear up any lurking data corruption problems. The table (RESERV) contains about 91,000 175-byte records with 12 indexed fields and a memo field which has information in about half of the records.

I started an append from the current table to an empty copy of RESERV on a new Dell Optiplex G1 (celeron) computer with 64 MB running Win 98. VFP 5.0 was loading 1000 records in 21 seconds from a Novell Netware server. I knew this was too slow (about 31 mins to complete) so I rebooted the computer and tried again. This time it loaded 10,000 records in 15 seconds and finished the entire load in short order.

My experience is that as soon as I have done much work in VFP on a computer running Win 95/98 that I often see this type of slowdown.

I tried the same append today on a new Dell Optiplex GX1 (pentium III) with 128 MB and Win NT. The entire append of 91,000 records required 60 seconds when there was little or no network traffic. I tried it later when the network was busier. It took 80 seconds, 81 seconds, and 85 seconds on successive loads. My quick analysis is that NT is not slowing down in the way that 95/98 does.

I can run more controlled tests but I thought I would ask if others have seen these dramatic changes in speed.

Peter Robinson