Neil,
>The table I am using is a fpw26 free table (pre-DBC era). I am using the table in a .net application via ado.net. Does ado.net even recognize the index of a free, pre-dbc table.

if the data is accessed via odbc from the .dbf, AFAIK the .cdx-index type should be recognized whenever it is working in fpw.

HTH

thomas