It's very irritating. I will define a function key to do a SET STATUS BAR ON automatically to ease the frustration. If I remember correctly, this "feature" (as Microsoft calls them) started in VFP 8

>I hope you're able to live with it, because it wears me out. :) I don't know if this bug was introduced in VFP8, and even if it affects all installations, but my STATUS BAR goes off at will. Even just clicking in a program I'm editing can make it turn off (even though SET("STATUS") will show "ON").