Herman, thanks.

Looks like I need to go here with another approach.
Even inkey(0,..) forces INVOKEVERBS to work, it requires user to click on the screen; otherwise EXE does not quit after the code is completed. If I use inkey(1), then user dialogs initiated by INVOKEVERBS are ignored.
So, I decided to drop the issue, and to go with another routine that does not need "invokeverbs".

Thanks for your valiable input.

>Hi Yuri,
>
>Well, I can't quite explain what is really happening here too. But my guess is, when the VFP apps running as an EXE, VFP needs at least "one event" so VFP can wait for any input. Without READ EVENTS or INKEY(0), VFP will not wait for any input especially an event from a dialog (thread) that is not attached to VFP, like the dialog comes from InvokeVerbs. And then VFP execute the line "oShell = NULL" so the object is destroyed without question.
>
>But again that's just my guess :-)