>>>>>Usually when I see this it means that I've started a second instance of VFP.
>>I don't do anything special. With VFP 7, I never had a problem with that so far.
>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.

From the VFP online Help, "The resource file (for example, FOXUSER) is now opened shared, so you can run multiple instances of Visual FoxPro using the same FOXUSER file.".

Finally, when you open VFP twice, the "last guy wins" so when you close Instance1 before closing Instance2, Instance2's settings persist, (or Instance1's settings are lost).