I used to have that on isolated occasions with VFP 7 but with VFP 8, I have that on a permanent basis. I can't simulate that from the command prompt. However, when that command is being executed from the COM server, it returns a bunch a weird characters instead of the month.

CMONTH(DATE())

I really can't find a workaround for that. I have the use of CMONTH() at several places and I really need to know what is causing this.

The same happens with the error message such as MESSAGE(). I really don't know where this is coming from but when I have an error, I really can't understand anything in it as it's unreadable.