Hello Fred,
Can't speak for VFP8, but in VFP7 I followed your steps exactly and had no problems opening the same table in the 2nd session of VFP.

Is it possible you didn't set excl off in your 2nd session of Fox? Not sure about 8.0, but in 7.0 the default is set excl on.
Hope that helps,
---J

>Open vfp 8 in one session and set excl off and open any table and flock() it
>Open another copy of vfp 8
>Attempt to open the table in any manner you can. Gives attempting to lock message.
>
>I know the documentation says you can access it read only, but I think that is wrong. Any comments would really help Nerissa and me.