As a final resolution so that others may benefit, I'd like to state the Norton WinDoctor is a fine product, but be careful with it. You can overuse that product, which is why I believe that my VFP 8 program as well as my application stopped working properly. Once the registry has things the way it wants it, it is best not to mess with it. Ultimately, I could not resolve anything until I completely rebuilt my WinXP machine form scratch, having saved everything else I needed. When I say "from scratch", that is precisely what I mean. I wiped out the partition and started over with a new operating system installation.