I'm testing here with a 300,000 record table - but I no longer have VFP5 on my machines.

Make sure you are using the same SET DELETED setting for both environments during the query (ON or OFF). This could easily account for the difference.

I'm assuming you are using CDX files. Let us know:

1) What indexes you have defined [specifically, the fields mentioned in your SQL statement plus whether you have an index on DELETED()].

2) CPU

3) RAM

4) I'm also assuming you're running your tests on the exact same machine. Are your tables on the same machine, or on a file server?

5) O.S. Version