>I have an action in the application taht takes 5 minutes or so to run.
>While running I update a list box with the status of the actions. During some longer actions I show a progress bar. This all works ok until I switch to another application and then back.
>
>At this point the application appears to hang with "not repsonding" on the title bar. I can see it's till processing because entries are being created in the database.
>
>Is there anything I can do to fix this?
>
>I tried a timer with DOEVENTS and thisform.refresh but it didn't work.

"Not responding" displays because the application does not respond to periodic messages from the OS. While the application is in the foreground, enough processing power is devoted to allow for occasional wait states. During these wait states, the application can respond to the OS messages. When you switch to another application, the processing time slices fro background applications are probably different.

Check out MSKB#308417 for some information on changing this under XP. The concepts are the same if you are using Windows 2000.

HTH.