Walter,
I think I may have found the source of the problem.
I had !deleted() tags on all tables and with set deleted on in the form's data environment, it seems to have caused a severe degradation to the file open performance.
I've since removed this tag and reindexed all tables. Table opening times seem to have been brought down to 0.002 seconds per table as compared to 1-2 seconds earlier.
Will be trying out the MTU and Anti Virus angle also. BTW, which Anti Virus is the most common one giving problems to VFP?
Thanks
Yau