Dear Experts

I am developing a Weight Bridge Software.
To get data from Indicator device I use following procedure.

THISFORM.MSCOMM.PORTOPEN=.T.
Abc=THISFORM.MSCOMM.INPUT
IF LEN (ALLTRIM(SUBSTR(A,2,8)))>0
THISFORM.TEXT1.VALUE=VAL(SUBSTR(A,2,8))
ENDIF
THISFORM.MSCOMM.PORTOPEN=.F.

That above work fine in VFP6 on Windows98 platform.
But when I test this procedure in WindowsXP, following situation appears

Abc=THISFORM.MSCOMM.INPUT

In the above line when I put mouse pointer on (THISFORM.MSCOMM.INPUT)
then it shows following data

30#& 30#& 30#& 30#&

But variable ABC holds nothing, so text1 appears empty.
My question is: why MSCOMM.INPUT value does to store into variable abc.

Please help