>i have a little app that references about ten table and index files. is there any way on god's green earth that i can somehow combine all these files into one file - sorta like an Access .MDB file - and then distribute it?? i first thought of a simple solution such as having them in a zip file and unzipping them in the beginning and then zipping them up at the end. however this solution is way too slow. any suggestions or am i SOL?

As Cetin said, if the DBFs are read only (which I doubt they would be), then you can include them in the project so they get compiled into the EXE. Else you are SOL.

You can easily ZIP them with something like DynaZIP library. Excellent product and very fast.
http://www.innermedia.com/html/dynazip.htm