I have a real estate (condominiums) property management program that I
wrote in Foxpro for Windows.  I have several users who use this
program on several different computers.  These computers are not
networked; the program runs locally on all machines.  Foxpro is not a
very secure system in that the data tables can be viewed and opened by
anyone.  Anyone could probably use a program such as Excel to view and
change the data.

I would like to prevent the users from accessing the data of the
program thru the Windows Explorer or thru  any other means except the
program itself.  So if the users go to the directory where the program
and data are (program and data are in the same directory), I do not
want them to be able to see the contents of the directory or change
the data files.

I have tried various Windows security settings but I cannot figure out
how to allow the user to use the program and to make changes to data
tables thru the program, but to not be able to view or change the data
thru Windows Explorer.  The operating system on all computers is
Windows XP (some Home and some Professional).  I am not ready to
consider rewriting the program in a newer language that has built in
data security, but I may have to eventually.  Please help!

You haven't made it clear to me what you mean to achieve by
restricting access to one program - is this supposed to prevent people
copying or altering the data or what?

You didn't state whether there are any other requirements - this could
determine whether it is satisfactory to make this the only program on
the computer (and keep the computers in a locked cabinet to prevent
someone using removable media or opening the case).  You'd then have
to look at the minimal installation that will boot and run that one
program - I'm unsure how achievable that is.

Access comtrol involving program subjects rather than user subjects is
a standard feature of Unix and Linux (known as setuid).

Hi,

You need a program called folder gaurd : http://www.winability.com/folderguard/
you can set the folder as a readonly and set an exception so that your
program can get full access to that folder. I did it years ago on
win98 but I think it will still work.