>>My conclusion is that the "big scan" is totally hosing the environment, but how or how to avoid or how to fix is the "big question". there is absolutely now way to code around the bad environment. It has to be either fixed or prevented.

Here is part of message from Bruce Campbell, Message# 292351, where he describes memory leaks in a SCAN loop the performs multiple SELECTS. You might try eliminating the SCAN and replacing it with DO WHILE.

<>I have some "small" (as in GUI, but not small in calculations :) mathematical vfp apps that require as long as a day or two to run, which create many hundreds of thousands of repeated cursors and billions of calculations. I had trouble with memory leaks using SCAN - eventually went to as much SQL as possible and a few FOR loops solved the problem. Also, if you're not already doing so, I recommend using a stand-alone machine with no network connection and certainly no AV scanner running. Those also were causing problems...