>When you wipe out the tables and recreate them, does "xxxx.dbf" actually get recreated, or is it
possibly still using the same one?

First I tried going with the network files that had been restored. When those didn't work, I deleted them and recreated them. I'm confident that they were wiped out.

> Important question: Before you removed the programs and data from the hard drive, was it working
OK? Are you sure... (did you actually use it recently before removing it?)

I didn't actually use it, but other people did. However, they were using last year's data, and not the new data. Something for me to think about, maybe. I might try restoring last year's data, and seeing if the program would work with that. That way, I would know if the problem lies with the program or the data.

> What is the actual contents of the "xxxx.dbf"? What is the file structure, how many records in it?
Perhaps the error message you are getting is generated by the program if the OS date or DBF
header update date or the contents of a field do not match with a field in some other table --
perhaps some kind of "system info" kind of table that tracks the last date the system was used?

The program depends on multiple dbf files, all created from a "master" dbf file. The master contains about 190,000 records. The remaining databases are created from the master dbf. Each has the same file structure (39 fields, 280 char in length). The number of records varies from 1 to a couple of hundred. The only other dbf in the directory that I could find was the Foxuser file. Nothing has been updated in it since 1997. I think I said already that the files are recreated each year. That includes the Master file. The data is good for one fiscal year only. After that, the files are compressed and set aside in an "old" directory, and the entire set of files is recreated.

> In other words, perhaps we're assuming that we need to change the date in xxxx.dbf when it's a
date in another table that would do the trick.

All the files associated with this program are in the one subdirectory. This is an old DOS program, created in the days before the Windows Registry, etc.! :)

Thanks for your time.

Kim