>By default, I have set status off and set talk off in my setup prg.
>I recently discovered that also adding 'set status bar off' creates some odd screen display effects - almost as if 'set talk' were on, but worse, dumping text on to the screen - for example during SQL searches. Any thoughts by the VisFox literati out there?

It looks like you have set talk somewhere. If you are using private datasession than SET TALK and some other SET comands atre scooped to that session. You have to reissue them in the form Load method or BeforeOpenTable in DE.