I would update it less often. Put a counter inside the scan (let's call it i), because there may be deleted records.

if mod(i,5000)=0  && update every 5000 records
    wait str(i) window nowait
endif

I'd be real curious to know how well Sergey's idea would work...

>Its still extremely slow. I only put the wait window in so I could gauge where i was in the table.