>>>Not necessarily. If the control was designed to be dropped on a form, you're probably not going to be able to CREATEOBJECT it. But if it tries to display anything in a DLL, VFP will block and throw an error.
>>>
>>>>Is that also why I can't CREATEOBJECT() the activex control directly?
>>>>
>>>>Well that's not quite right. I can createobject() it but nothing on the control works and I get weird 'catastrophic failure' on anything I do.
>>
>>
>>This control doesn't display anything and has no visual elements when instantiated. Is there any way I can verify that this is indeed what's going on?
>
>Does it work if you build it into a COM EXE?

Yes. I guess that's my answer :)

Using COM EXE kills my ability to multithread.

Bummer. I really need to speed up this process.