>Thanks for your fast response. This is happening on both of my W2k machines as well as my client's NT4 machine. I will play around with it today and let you know the result. Thanks again!
>

FWIW, the test conditions were:

(1) Create a simple form in the VFP screen based on the default form class, modeless, 640x480

(2) Add a standard command button to the form, with the following code in the Click() event:

SET CLASSLIB TO PROCESS ADDITIVE
ox = CREATEOBJ('api_apprun','"C:\Program Files\Accessories\WORDPAD.EXE" MyFile.Doc',,'NOR')
uResult = ox.LaunchAppAndWait()
wait window transform(uResult) + ' ' + ox.icErrorMessage
ox=null

Video drivers on the ME box were the OS-distributed drivers for the Diamond V770 at 1024x768x32bits/pixel, and on the Win2K box I used the Matrox drivers for the G400 DualHead at 1280x1024x32bits/pixel driving a single monitor, and both have the latest critical and recommended OS updates installed. Both have some of the Active Accessibiity features enabled, use Active Desktop, and IE 5.5 installed. Compare your system configuration to the setups I've tried, and rule out issue with your video driver; I dp this by changing the video driver to the standard VGA "Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA)" in the Display Conrol Panel Applet.

You might also check your video card vendor, they may have updated drivers.

In general, minimizing and maximizing the VFP screen avoids the problem. You can aso use API calls to CreateWindow to place a Winodw 'on top of' the VFP window, or try locking updates from being written to a VFP Window using LockWindowUpdate():

DECLARE SHORT LockWindowUpdate IN WIN32API INTEGER hWnd
DECLARE INTEGER GetActiveWindow IN WIN32API
=LockWindowUpdate(GetActiveWindow())

Nothing will actually be written to the window, even if images get overlaid, etc. Unlocking the Window resuts in a complete repaint; if any writes actually took place that wee directed at the indo, they appear on repaint. A locked indo can have focus; try entering the following code in the command box:

DECLARE SHORT LockWindowUpdate IN WIN32API INTEGER hWnd
DECLARE INTEGER GetActiveWindow IN WIN32API
on key label F2 ? lockwindowupdate(0)
=LockWindowUpdate(GetActiveWindow())

You can enter commands in the command window to your heart's content; launch new forms, pop up mesageboxes, generate errors and respond to their dialogs, but the main VFP screen looks the same while locked, and maintaining a virtual window with the buffered content - when the Windo is unlocked, the buffer is written as needed.