Arnaldo,

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Unfortunately, it is not a server app, the apps run independently on each workstation and simply use a shared database on the server.

It sounds like I need to write a monitor program that runs in the background and which can send out a "shutdown" message when the apps need to be closed for nightly processing. The monitor program could then start the app it shut down, once the server side monitor program sends an "all clear" message back. This might take me a while to write though, since I am still pretty new to using VB.

The other difficulty is that the application sometimes has several windows open. How do I know which one to call to close? The window title also changes each time a new process starts, the title has the date and time as part of its name.

Thanks again,

>Hi GW Gross!
>
>First of all, do the client apps log into a server app (by winsock or comm)?
>if so then you can make the server app to send and order to the client app to unload itself.
>
>If you don't have a server app to control your client app:
>
>- a rusty way to close those client is to create a table to notify them that the db is about to be repaired. The client app should read that table constantly and unload it self when the table have the correct value.
>
>- Another way is to create a program that closes separate applications. This program have to log on a server program, the server program should tell the client the title bar text of the window (program) to close and the client should call an API to complete the operation. (You can find info. about the API call here: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q176/3/91.ASP)
>
>- each .mdb file from access create on their path a .ldb file where you can find who (network identification) have the db opened (could be more than one network id). You can open this file as a textfile with the Open statement from vb.
>
>i hope that this can help you, i am making a program that updates files automaticaly and i needed to close apps too, and i choosed the api call way, but i still have to know the title bar text of the apps running on a PC to complete my program.