Harry-

>I thought you might be onto something with the file being used exclusively in another datasession. Its been many moons since I did any work on the code and I couldn't remember whether that was a possibility. It was used in another session but not exclusively so I still don't understand its protest - particularly as it has been working up till recently and, as I say, the code hasn't changed in months.

The entire codebase hasn't changed in months? Even if so, you can't rule out the very likely case of code executing in an order, or through a branch, that isn't normally executed.

So, you confirmed that the table was used, but not exclusively. Any chance it was used elsewhere, too? Do you anywhere in your code base, for some reason, SET EXCLUSIVE ON or *sometimes* use tables exclusively for, say, reindexing or packing?

>As you may read above, Nigel's (Share) suggestion did the trick, despite the fact that its a standalone app. Bizarre.

Since including the SHARED clause in USE only overrides SET('EXCLUSIVE')="ON", I'd be skeptical of this actually fixing the problem. You may only have masked it.

>I suspect my real problem is a deep registry problem with XP.

JMO, but I doubt it, frankly. But then there's always something new under the sun.