Epilogue: (This one is really weird)

Found a solution. But first...

Noticed also that screen saver would not come on (it's a notebook computer). Noticed when I would test screen saver, it would only go for an instant. Noticed also that some other apps weren't behaving quite right, such as the rightclick context menu in the "latest" version of Hotmail. Just like the tooltips with VFP, that context menu would disappear instantly. However, tooltips in other applications were working fine.

After mucho googlo and various driver swappings / disablings / updatings and robust use of msconfig all with no success, found an obscure thread where somebody who uses the same notebook said: "Turn off machine, unplug power, remove batttery, hold power button down for about 10 seconds. Then put things back in place and turn it back on."

IT WORKED. So my best guess is that the problem is some obscure BIOS-related power-management issue that was causing bogus events/interrupts, and this crazy intervention somehow/someway reset the problematic condition.

>It seems that with VFP8 (which I'm still using, and thus it's only VFP8 that I can speak for), suddenly native VFP tooltips only display for about 1 second or less, then disappear. I cannot find anything that would have changed things except for the occasional Automatic Updates from Microsoft.
>
>Any idea what could be going on? Tooltips in other apps seems to work OK. Our VFP apps still seem to work fine, it's just a misbehaving tooltip issue. This happens even when I simply use the devel environment to create a simple form with a single button with a tooltip (i.e., no VFP timers going off in the background, etc).
>
>Thanks very much.