>Sure enough, it is a top level form. So this "feature" is by design? In the spirit of "Damnit, it used to work before...", what does anyone recommend for a workaround if I want to use a top level form?

Here are two:

1) for many things, I use the activex statusbar in my top-level instead of wait windows - it's more generally standard.

2) but sometime you really want to simulate (well, partly :) a wait window...to do this without* a timer:

Make a modeless form that resembles a wait window, customized any way you like. (this is, in fact, better than a wait window, perhaps.) To use this, launch it something like this from any form with the property waitform, the simplest is just to use the main top-level to always do it:

do form WaitForm NAME thisform.waitform (or using createobj setting reference)
wait window 'help' time 5 && or whatever
thisform.waitform.release

in other words, the hidden wait window acts as the timer...