>>>What are the factors that can make an index fall out of step with its table, Can network etc cause this ?
>>
>>Mark,
>>What do you mean "fall out of step"? What type of symptoms are you having?
>>
>>-Ed
>>
>> Its Foxprox 2.6 , We had a power cut last monday, since then all Fox Dos processes have been running slow (very) some files are not reading at all & it seems the master table's index is not updating with the table

Yes a network can cause this type of problem, especially when you are adding or editing record and you lose your connection. Another thing I've seen happen is the DBF header can get corrupted so you get a 'Not a Database' error the next time you USE it. Try reindexing first. If that doesn't speed things up I would suggest rebuilding the index from scratch. I've had indexs that far gone before. A few rules of thumb that I would suggest following for running FoxPro 2.x on a network are:

1. Use SCATTER, GATHER and INSERT-SQL. Avoid APPEND BLANK.
2. Ensure that SMARTDRV is not on the users machine. FoxPro has it's own internal cache