Eyvind was right. The problem is really GDIPLUS.DLL. When I installed my VFP8 applications, I put GDIPLUS.DLL into the Common\Microsoft Shared folder. This works fine for my VFP8 applications since it is in the same folder of the VFP8 runtime, but fails for VFP9 because the runtime is in Windows\System. After moving GDIPLUS.DLL into the Windows\System folder, the problem is now solved.
Thanks for Eyvind's hint.
><snip>>
>>The gdiplus.dll I think is new to vfp9, it wasn't needed in vfp8, where the one nedded was gdiwhatsoever.dll (i can't remember well) so be sure to copy this new one
>
>The gdiplus.dll is required since VFP8 and there's no other "gdiwhatsoever.dll". See
http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~VFP8RuntimeFiles~VFP