Thanks for all the help everyone. Of course when I traced down the underlying problem it was really stupid. I had screen=off in the config.fpw so the X box I was selecting was only closing my top level form, not shuting down VFP. I hope everyone is amused by this enough so that you won't be too annoyed with me for wasting your time. Some of the other things that I've seen while working with this still don't make sense (like why the app disappeared from task manager when the top level form was closed) but that will be for another day.

Thanks again
Donny