I never did use VFP3. Ooof, what a mess. But according to the article (enclosed below) which you refered me to, it's not a problem with VFP5. So I stick to my guns about strategy, unless you are running VFP3.0 and can't decide what file servers will be used. I can see how you couldn't ask 70 sites to switch to NT, though. But since the problem only occurs when the table is located "on a Windows 95 machine," maybe the solution is to updgrade to VFP5 instead.

If you are having this kind of problem, you should be afraid of it affecting other data. It's not really a question of system key strategy, but a question of network software/VFP3 incompatibilities in a combination that should be avoided like the plague.

Adam


> PRB: Data Corruption with Row Buffering in Visual FoxPro 3.0

Last reviewed: July 30, 1997
Article ID: Q172086
The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows, versions 3.0, 3.0b

SYMPTOMS

Using optimistic or pessimistic table buffering with multiple users trying to simultaneously update a table, located on a
Windows 95 machine, certain records in the table may become corrupted. This is sometimes seen more often with optimistic
row buffering. This behavior does not happen in Visual FoxPro 5.0 or 5.0a.

RESOLUTION

Place the table(s) on a computer running Windows NT 4.0 using either the NT File System (NTFS) or File Allocation Table
(FAT) hard disk partitions.