You say you have a worker thread posting messages to the UI thread. Your worker thread is not being interrupted any differently than it was when the combobox is not being used. Windows runs multiple threads by time slicing. Higher priority threads get more slices more often. It appears to you that the thread is interupted by the click but it is not. As your using post message, the UI thread updates the control content. This is the same thread that handles the users click on the combobox. While the UI thread is handling the click combo drop event, any messages posted by the worker thread are being added to the message queue for the UI thread to process once it returns from its current work. The issue you have is that the drop event of the combo is animated and due to this appears to pause the UI while this happens. Apart from re-writing how a combo box works (or some how disabling the animation) I do not beleive there is anything you can do about this. As a test to show its not affectig the worker thread. Time how long it takes for your on screen counter to increment to a set count. Then check that its takes the equivalent time (within a dop of the combobox time threadshold) it should still reach the same count. If you vote me down, my score will only get lower

I believe you can statically link the C and C++ run-times into your DLL, so it won't try and load the VS2005/2008 DLLs when it's used. If you do this, you need to take care with memory management of objects passed back from your DLL. Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p

Linking with static CRT is definitely a valid option. I call such bugs obscure because sometimes a 3rd party library can be added long after choosing to link with static CRT and suddenly a working application might start crashing. -Saurabh

Greg Ellis wrote: so I can actually safely use GDI calls to draw on the device context from directly within the thread Safely?  Not without synchronization.  You have to insure the user can't do anything to cause GDI ops - like dragging a window across your windows, etc. It is possible, but safely takes some work :) If you use regular thread synchronization to control all thread access to GDI then it will work pretty well. I've been doing it for a lot of years, including rendering video and graphics on windows of another process, and I've not seen or heard of any problems yet. Mark Mark Salsbery Microsoft MVP - Visual C++ :java:

Greg Ellis wrote: I guess they left that part out. Maybe you write their documentation since you left all that out of your first post. *sigh* See if this helps: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323076[^]

I don't agree that all drawing is done on one thread. Through WM_PAINT maybe, but if you're using GDI to draw from another thread then it's drawing on that thread. I do video rendering and it's definitely not on one UI thread :) *edit* BTW, I've personally never used multiple UI threads - I meant multiple worker threads doing GDI drawing. Try calling GDIFlush() when you're done drawing each time. Also remember GDI is not thread safe - It's up to you to sync drawing from other threads with drawing that may occur in response to WM_PAINT on the UI thread. Mark -- modified at 13:15 Wednesday 4th July, 2007 Mark Salsbery Microsoft MVP - Visual C++ "Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn."

Something like this? size_t nNewSize = 2; CArray<CBackground*, CBackground*>* m_paryBackground = new CArray<CBackground*, CBackground*>[nNewSize]; In the future, you should include the compiler error you are getting so we don't have to guess. --Mike-- Visual C++ MVP :cool: LINKS~! Ericahist | PimpFish | CP SearchBar v3.0 | C++ Forum FAQ Ford, what's this fish doing in my ear?

Or you could use the "Generic-Text Routine Mappings" These will work on both Unicode and non-Unicode builds. CString cszNumber = _T("1234567"); int nNumber = _tstoi(cszNumber); "Great job, team. Head back to base for debriefing and cocktails." (Spottswoode "Team America")

:doh: I didn't even think of the #pragmas! Learn somethin new every day :) Thanks, Mark "Great job, team. Head back to base for debriefing and cocktails." (Spottswoode "Team America")

If I understand correctly, you have a list of ordered elements, and a partial match. Binary search will help, but won't be exactly what you want. To do something similar, I use a binary search which does a length restricted string comparison to find an element which matches, and then backs up to find the first match. For my application this approach is fine, since I only have a few items in each such grouping. Your mileage may vary. However, a better approach, which someone has already suggested, might be to have a small array of indices into the array, keyed by first letter. Essentially something like this: typedef struct index { TCHAR chr; int start; } INDEX; CArray<INDEX, INDEX&>> ix; INDEX in; ix.RemoveAll(); in.chr = _T('\0'); in.start = -1; for(i = 0; i < nElements; i++) { // get first char of this item... chr = ....; if (in.chr!=chr) { // make a new index entry in.chr = chr; in.start = i; ix.Add(in); } } in.chr = _T('\0'); in.start = nElements; ix.Add(in); To do your search, look in the ix array for a matching first character, get the start index from the matching entry, and the stop index from the next entry :) This gives you a smaller space to do additional matching if necessary. Steve S Developer for hire

I have tried that, but it does not work exactly the same as the WM_VSCROLL message. The blting that it does is very poor. If I was able to somehow send the WM_VSCROLL message it would solve all my problems. Cheers, Greg

Do exactly as you`ve been told, and mind that the SB_PAGEDOWN could be used too. Sincerely yours, Ilya Kalujny.

This may help: http://www.codeproject.com/dialog/coolscroll.asp[^] Chris Richardson Terrain Software