Snip..
>I implemented your suggestion as follows:
>
>

ThisForm.AddObject("TextBox1","TextBox")
>WITH ThisForm.TextBox1
> .top=48
> .left=10
> .height=80
> .width=635
> .FontSize=11
> .visible=.T.
> .enabled=.F.
>ENDWITH
>
>ThisForm.Lockscreen=.F.
>ThisForm.TextBox1.value='lengthy process .. please wait'
>ThisForm.TextBox1.Refresh()
>

>
>I had to add the Refresh() at the end before the screen would update on queue, has this been your experience also ?

To my experience this doesn't need refresh. So we are back to where we started. There is something else preventing normal behaviour for both label and textbox.
Craig and Jeff's wait window suggestion works all the time. But I still wonder what caused it. Other things I use for this purpose :
1) Set message to && Use FP statbar
2) Add an OLEStatbar with panels and something like :
this.oleStatBar.panels(1).text = "Loading data in treeview..."
* Start data process
* Done part so far && Funny also a progbar works at the same time in Panels(2)
this.oleStatBar.panels(3).text = str(recno(),4)+"/"+ltrim(str(reccount()))

* Of course I don't call this part with every pass but per 10,100 etc
* If I use it ie: for populating a treeview, the total time with those showup only differ 1 or 2 secs than w/o it at all (ActiveX always seem slow to me).

And final, if there is hope your data crunching part could be made faster, concentrate on it and simply use "wait window" way.
Cetin