I think we're sort of talking past one another. Why would you reboot your machine if a "current status" marker of the thermometer bar is flashing, but *not* if the thermometer is just sitting there, unmoving? This seems kinda counter-intuitive to me.

I like the idea of the ActiveX/therm combination. I'll explore that a bit?

>IMHO, I'm much more likely to hit CTRL-ALT-DEL on a flashing animation than on a thermometer that actually tell me that something is progressing.
>
>What about a combination of an ActiveX control and a thermometer (like the copy file in Explorer)?
>
>>Again, simply because of aesthetics. It isn't animated (which is, IMHO, the best way to represented progress), and it only *implies* how much is left to be done. This is, I think, perfectly acceptable for developers and other techies, because we're accustomed to thinking in such terms, but it's unnecessarily demanding of the average user.