Doug,

>Sure but aren't programs allowed to gracefully shut down in a situation like this? IOW, wouldn't Word (for example) automatically save a file in this case? If so, then wouldn't there be a way to have a VFP program essentially respond, "Alright already! Give me a second to shut down and clean up before you proceed." <g>

Exactly that's for apps that are already out and running. Windows broadcasts a message to every Window so that it does get a chance to do an orderly shutdown, before the O/S stops supplying little things like keypresses and disk writes. *s*