Glen, Thanks for reminding me about the pre /pre thing. I always forget. In any case, I think you may have misunderstood my problem. I want the screen to refresh. The code goes out to an Access database and does some calculations to generate a code that the user can use to unlock the ignition on a vehicle. This code is what does not appear on the screen and to make matters worse the button that initiates the process does not disable, so that the user can click on it again and thus generate codes that will be incorrect. Any ideas?

I have noticed this before whenever VFP calls an external program it has trouble refreshing the current screen.