>>I didn't realize you were using VFP7. Under VFP6 only one process gets to use a given resource file. VFP7 seems to behave differently in this respect. It could be that this change was accompanied by an intermittent bug such as you describe. I'll bet you wouldn't see this problem if each instance used its own resource file, but I imagine that this may not be a satisfactory workaround.
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>From VFP 7, what I found is that two instances may use the same resource. With prior versions, the 2nd instance was starting from a new resource. Also, in my tests so far, after almost a year, I mostly never got a problem with that. Whenever I was starting VFP or my PRG application (not compiled), on the next run, everything was still ok. As I said, that only happened randomly and only occasionnaly.

Aha! If subsequent runs show that the resource file is OK, it sounds as though there are occasions when the second instance is quietly prevented from opening the same resource file, as it was in VFP6. Next time you see the problem, check sys(2005) and set('resource'). My guess is that you will see that you failed to open the usual resource file.