Robert Holmgren wrote on 26 Feb 2004: > Once you unset the Archive bit [on a directory], it stays un-set. I've recently switched from 98 to XP and have noticed that the archive bits on some of my directories keep getting re-set. I've just diagnosed the problem: xcopy between directories sets the archive bit on the target directory (though xcopy for a specific file does not). Maybe this is well known, though I couldn't find it in the archives. (I regularly transfer files between two computers via a portable HD using xcopy e:\xy c:\xy\ /M/Y/S to get the files from the portable drive.) It seems that another approach would be to leave the archive bit alone and write substitutes for call and dir that first reset the archive bit on the target directory, then do their stuff. I can't see anything like that in U2. Has anyone tried something like that? (Using attrib to reset the archive bit after an xcopy of course works fine, but is rather slow when the number of subdirectories is large.) Martin -- Martin J. Osborne Department of Economics 150 St. George Street University of Toronto Toronto M5S 3G7 Canada http://www.economics.utoronto.ca martin.osborne@xxxxxxxx http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/osborne +1 416-978-5094 Have you seen http://econtheory.org