Is properties a property or method that you've added to the COM object! if not take a look on MSDN for TLBINF32.DLL it's a COm object that will let you iterate through an object properties/methods. Joe.B.

Couldn't you create a virtual cube of just the members you want to see?

Instead of WaitForSingleObject could you not use MsgWaitForMultipleObject just before the thread is about to do it's stuff create a Timer that fires every second. when MsgWaitForMultipleObjects returns determine what's happened has the thread finished or do you have a windows msg i.e. WM_TIMER. if this is appropriate you could have a class variable that indicates what step the thread is up to - wrapped by a CriticalSection so you can update your UI accordingly.

import "tlbinf32.dll" exclude("ParamFlags", "IDLFlags", "ImplTypeFlags","_DirectCalls")

The reason that an exception doesn't occur in this code in release is because the optimizer will throw all the code away as it does nothing... As soon as you include the cout z has to around so a value can be displayed hence the exception - In a debug build no code is optimized hence you get the behaviour expected.