Mark,
Can you issue a CLEAR RESOURCES before trying the copy operation? VFP is pretty tenacious about holding hard read locks on files when it opens them.
>Put any transparent GIF into a picture object on a form in your VFP app. Then try to use the COPY FILE command on the GIF file. VFP denies access and reports the file as being in use. This only seems to happen with transparent GIF images. It's a REAL PAIN when you want to give somebody the option to make a copy of an image they are looking at. I converted the COPY FILE command to a Windows API call. Same thing with VFP's RENAME command in this situation. Things work fine when using corresponding WinAPI calls directly. In other words, VFP apparently only flags the file as "in use" within its own data structures. Any other Windows app can still read the file in the circumstances I describe above.