>>Well . . . I didn't get any responses to this post, :) but for those of you who scratched your head over it, MS KB article Q157727 says that indeed animated cursors work only in the development environment and will not work in an EXE. Thanks MS. :)
>>
>>Bill
>
>very useful 'feature'. another reason to tell client 'hey, it worked on my machine'

At least the article says:
"NOTE: In Visual FoxPro 5.0a, using a .cur file also produces the same behavior. Visual FoxPro 5.0a Service Pack 2 allows a .cur file to be used properly. "
:)