>If I recompile the REPORTER.EXE COM component into a multi-threaded REPORTER.DLL, this new DLL still uses almost 100% of the web server CPU time and will not let other requests to the web server be served until the component has finished processing the request.

Unfortunatly there isn't going to be anything you can do about that. Nada...

If the report itself or the SQL command that leads up to it is eating that much CPU then you're stuck with that. The reason that your client (and the Web server etc) see high CPU loads as well is because the CPU is already maxed...

This is one huge problem with VFP with long running requests. Remember I think we had this discuession last year (or two ago) at a Web Conneciton training conference - if VFP requests take more than a few seconds they tend to eat all the available CPU very quickly and not release it once it got a hold on it. THe only effective way to deal with this is to offload the processing to another machine altoghether (which at the time I suggested using something liek wwAsynchRequest or MSMQ to pass messages to another machine to process the request.