>What angers me about all this is that in DOS if any DBF had this problem you got "Not a FoxPro Database File" as soon as you opened the table.

Mmm, I don't think so. You get that message when the header says there's one more record than there actually is. You describe a problem that is exactly the opposite. I don't know exactly what the validation is, but I'm sure it's something along the lines of "let's see, the header says 50 records, so let's see if there's 50 records worth of data. Yup, they're there." And the records are there, there's just some extra data as well. The validation routine probably doesn't look beyond what it thinks should be there. Keep in mind that this is just a guess; I haven't looked at the actual code.

> Microsoft seems to have done away with the check in VFP.

Nope, it's still there.

> I can only assume that their respnse would be "Go and buy Back Office if you want error checks"

No, error checking is in place just as it was in the DOS versions. But if your application is in a crash-prone environment, yes, I would suggest going to SQL Server if you want more robust data storage.