In your shoes I would try flipping .visible between .t. and .f. a few times instead of looping - no way to predict how many loops are necessary on other cpus and perhaps this is a better way to delegate the flash to off screen border lands ;-)

>Ok - that works! The delay of the form becoming visible from the 'timer' is much preferred to the flash! I set the form to open at top=-1000 and left=-1000, then in the gotfocus of the first control I put
>

>FOR x=1 TO 10000000
>	x=x+1
>ENDFOR
>thisform.Top=110
>thisform.Left=55
>

>Less that 10000000, and the flash still happens.
>
>Thanks everyone for the help!