>>>What is a "HINSTANCE hinst" and how do I get a value for it?
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>>An HINSTANCE is a handle instance - it's a 4 byte DWORD.
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>>What are you trying to provide a handle to? IOW, what API call are you rying to invoke?)
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>I am tring to call the createwindow api but I can't seem to get it to work.

The only HINSTANCE I see is a handle to the parent application, which is retrieved with GetModuleHandle():

DECLARE INTEGER GetModuleHandle IN WIN32API STRING lpModule

If a null is passed to GetModuleHandle(), it returns a handle to the file used to create the calling process (presumably VFP or a standalone .EXE here.) You can then pass the result of GetModuleHandle() as the HINSTANCE in CreateWindow().