I would suggest using WaitForSingleObject API call instead of calling GetExitCodeProcess within DO WHILE cycle. This way it works -- have just tested -- in both VFP8 and VFP9.

#DEFINE INFINITE  0xFFFFFFFF
= WaitForSingleObject(hProcess, INFINITE)

Insert this line immediately after obtaining process and thread handles replacing the DO WHILE part.

Also you may consider using Windows Scripting objects.

#DEFINE EXEC_NOWAIT 0
#DEFINE EXEC_AND_WAIT 1
oShell = CreateObject('WScript.Shell')
oShell.Run("notepad c:\temp\myfile.txt", 1, EXEC_AND_WAIT)