This is for all you Sherlock Holmes types out there: I have been asked to figure out why a VFP 5 app that has run well for several years is now having problems.

History: The application ran for over 2 years on a Windows network with a Windows 2000 Server (SP4) and 7 or 8 Windows NT4 workstations. At least one of these workstations successfully used a dial up connection. The application, runtime files and the data reside on a Windows 98 share. I’ve been told this is “for performance reasons.”

Recently a mixture of new and replacement workstations have been added, two local and two remote. These are a mixture of OS: 1 Windows NT4, 1 Windows XP 2002 and 2 Windows 2000. The remote workstations now use Terminal Services rather than dial up. These changes were all done about the same time and seemed to coincide with the onset of problems.

Problem: All 4 of the workstations with new hardware experience file access problems in one portion of the application at various times. These workstations conflict with each other, but not with any of the older workstations on the network. Whenever an access problem occurs, asking one of the two local users from this group to exit the application clears up the problem.

The error message from the application is a generic "File currently in use" with no specific error number. The line producing the error is “Use &File.” This is called from dozens of places, some of which cause the problem and many more that do not. While I am aware that FILE is a reserved word, I am not convinced this is the problem because it is not consistent. The module provides for “Return to Master” as a recovery from a file opening error, but that never happens because the routine obviously doesn’t get that far. The user is forced to use End Program in Task Manager to get out of the application.

There are also printing problems experienced by each of the workstations with new hardware but at this point, I don’t consider the print issue to be part of the file access problem.

I'm still in a fact-finding phase but thought I'd ask if this rings a bell with anyone. It seems to be a configuration issue but why would the workstations with new hardware conflict with each other when opening files and not with older workstations?