Then you have to rethink the entire problem. You can't use pointers in that way in a platform that uses a garbage collected heap. You would have to pin the object that you are pointing into at the current memory location, which will badly cripple the whole garbage collecting process as long as it is pinned. --- b { font-weight: normal; }

Great. It works fine. Now i'm able to make the progressbar be a real progressbar which shows continously progress ;) thanks a lot, wouldn't have get that by myself. here's some example code how it could look like: declaretion/definition: Private Printer As System.Management.ManagementObject Private PrinterSelect As New Management.SelectQuery("SELECT Name, PrinterStatus, DriverName, PortName, Comment, Local, Network, Default FROM Win32_Printer") Private PrinterSummary As New Management.ManagementObjectSearcher(PrinterSelect) Private PrinterCollection As Management.ManagementObjectCollection Private observer As New Management.ManagementOperationObserver Private completionHandler As New WMICompletionHandler executing code: PrinterCollection = Nothing PrinterSummary.Get(observer) PrinterCollection = PrinterSummary.Get() While Not (completionHandler.IsComplete) Application.DoEvents() System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500) End While For Each Printer In PrinterCollection {...} next printer ... it redraws the progressbar while executing the wmi query, too. you need to add the completionhandler class, shown on that msdn page. thanks again :)