>brett
>the application is running from the d drive on the workstation.

Then I would guess it is the speed of your machine. When you build an exe you create something that runs stand alone and includes all the libraries ( or at least calls) that you will need to run VFP. This takes time to do. When you fire off VFP in development you are running those libraries ahead of time. So when you fire off the form inside of VFP it does not have the added overhead of bringing in those libraries and all as they are already there. So the form appears to run faster. That is why in my applications I have a splash screen that comes up when the user fires off the application, just to show them that something is running while VFP gets all of its libraries and things into memory ready for use.

Hope this helps..