FWIW, i had the same problem (obtaining a byte-range lock with an offset of 0xeffffff0..0xefffffff) quite some time ago causing dBase IV on DOS machines with VLM clients to a mars_nwe server to fail to synchronize. The solution was probably the same as here, to fold this range into 0x7ffffffx. -- Morio Taneda admin,sociology,humanities,karlsruhe university,germany