Thanks. I do check if tableupdate returns .T., I just didn't post all the code. That having been said I just noticed that for the secondary table, employee,I just issue =Tableupdate(.T.,.T.,"employee") and do not check. Funny though that's the table that retained the updated data.
Thanks for the reminder. It may also be an impending HD failure as Tony has mentioned since the problem has NOT occured on any other laptop.

Thanks everybody for all your suggestions. I was going mad yesterday trying to figure out what I had done wrong.