>DBF tables within a database have started disappearing from a client's network.
>The configuration is VFP 5 runtime, W2000 sp1 on the workstations and server.
>The client has ruled out modifications to the network, workstation, cabling, virus, user error, etc.
>Although we haven't run the program in debug mode we are relatively confident that the PACK command is failing.
>The application is stable and has not been modified.
>There is over 2 Gb of space on the 'C' drive of the workstation running the application and about 19 Gb on the mapped server drive.
>The DBF is 8.06 Mb, CDX is 948 Kb and the FPT is 163 Mb.
>I would appreciate any other ideas before I suggest that the client have a third party run network and hardware diagnosis (big $).

If you truly suspect the native PACK, you might suggest the client purchase Stonefield Database Toolkit (you want version 5.1J for VFP, not the more recent versions for VFP6/VFP7.) Once you've run the Database Explorer of SDT against the DBC and any free tables, you can then use either the Database Explorer's Reindex button or the REINDEX.PRG that acts as a wrapper on the SDT classes to reindex and pack (you can either reindex or pack and reindex by altering a parameter passed to REINDEX.PRG when it is invoked.)

If this solves the problem, I suggest that you then replace PACK and REINDEX operations in your app with invocations of the SDT runtime classes, provided with SDT.