I checked "Hacker's..." and found a nifty section on DDE and OLE that I should have read months ago, but they don't mention your problem. I created a simple form with nothing but a messagebox call in the query unload method, and it executed whether or not the form was minimized...I know that's not much help :-(

>In VFP5, I closed a form while it was minimized by clicking on the 'X' in the minimized bar. It seems that ACTIVATE fires when you do that, but QueryUnload doesn't. I've tested it on several forms, and it seems to be a "feature".