Firstly, let me say thank-you - This is a perfectly stated question. About the problem: What you describe is "impossible in a correctly functioning system". Which means either you are not telling the Truth, or the system is not functioning correctly. We do however believe you - which leaves one possibility: The system is not working as expected. I believe c:/users/Craig/db should be good for app-related data (i.e. writable without superuser access) and should not get touched by the Windows UAC virtualization, but we will double-check. This is the list of things I would suggest to check: - Make the tables in slite3.exe (or DB Browser will do) in a common folder - "My Documents" will do - + See if you can SELECT the values from your program. + and if not, try from another program. - If it works, see if it now works from your given problem folder, - If it doesn't work, see if the file is read-only (Right-click --> Properties will do) - Then, delete the file, run your program again, see if it makes a new file, and: + See if the new file gets created in the same place and with the same name, + If it does, see if you can open it and + SELECT from it using another tool If my understanding of your question statements is relatively close, some of the above should fail and some not, which exactly fail and which errors they give when failing, will tell us a lot more about the problem. Let us know. Again, thank you for being clear, please keep it up!