Erik,

>The only rhyme or reason I can put to any of this is that it seems that opening a table (dbf or scx) that requires that VFP open one or more other tables upon using it causes the delay- using any 'free' table is quick.

Perhaps some netcard settings need to be tweaked -- maybe netcard io buffer counts or somesuch? Might only show up as a problem when opening several files.

I had that on a new HP Server once, while copying large numbers of files from the old server to the new. Upping the 6 or 8 buffer settings on the built-in net card to their max resulted in the computer doing the screaming (instead of me) from that point on.