Does this error occur with just 1 workstation, or with more than 1?

If 1 only, run hardware diagnostics and make sure all hardware drivers are correct and up-to-date.

If more than 1, look at things they have in common:

- Is the electrical power supply good? Should the computers and networking hardware (e.g. switches) have UPSs?
- Does network cabling meet Cat5 specs for cable and wall jacks/connectors?
- Can you try a different network switch?
- Has the W2K network been properly configured including settings such as DNS servers?

As for your architecture, on-line is becoming fashionable because it can give you real-time information on things like stock levels. You could consider doing *both* techiques - save data locally AND post to the server in real time. At the end of the day you could compare transactions written by Station X to the server, to those stored at Station X to make sure they're the same. That could be a neat reliability check.