Since upgrading to MPE/iX (from 'Classic' systems about five years ago), I have had sporadic complaints about jobs aborting because files that have just been created are non-existant when opened by the next process. We have worked around this problem by inserting :PAUSEs between the file creation and its subsequent use. A programmer just stopped by my office with this senario. ! copy filea,fileb ! !pause 30 ! suprtool i filec o fileb,erase x exit ! Upon executing, SUPRTOOL complained about the non-existance of fileb. The programmer is increasing the PAUSE to 120 seconds as a work a round. Has anyone else experienced this? It really bugs me! TIA, Mark Ranft General Mills Inc. [log in to unmask]