Can a FoxPro/Access 2.0 appl be running and not visible on task bar or in task manage

[mogenses]

This is going to be a good one but may be easy for you experts.

I have recently joined a tech support dept supporting an application using ACCESS 2.0 DATABASES and I believe written in Fox Pro. Yes, its 16 bit and still running for many clients (We're working on the new version.). We run WOWExe, NTVDM and a NWAdministrator application which allows workgrouped Nodes to access a central db.

I had a client who could not connect to the DB. Both the 'server' machine and the node are running WinXPPro. Each time I tried to start the NWAdmin on the 'server' machine it kept saying NWAdmin was already running although it was visible neither on the notification bar, where we normally see it, nor in the Task Manager processes. When I went back to the node to try to connect, it gave an error #70 and told me either the NWAdmin wasn't running or we had used too many licenses.

I asked a sr tech and he said the NWadmin must be running with a different user name (on the 'server')?? What does that mean? How can two users be running apps at once on the same PC. I noticed the client was using the Welcome screen log in with fast user switching. When I had the tech change to the ctrl alt del login the NWadmin started to work correctly. That is, we could run it and see it running. However, I have no reason to think this fixed it since other clients use the Welcome screen login because it is more user friendly.

So, how could this app be running unseen in this instance? Might the CtrlAltDel fix it? Any other ideas? Most of our time is spent debugging network connection errors to the db by trying one thing after another until it works.

Thanks for any help.