Just text back with "Gwisga t yf gormod". Probably won't make a difference at this point... Cheers, Steven.

Oh Yeah! You can't scare me either. I have children AND grandchildren. Happy New Year to you and your Family. Cheers. Steven.

I liked Mike's opinion on this matter. Now, what was the question again?

Thanks for the reply. I also found that; it did not directly answer my question. This implies that I need to make a call to serialPort.ReadLine() before any notification occurs in the case of a timeout. One of the reasons folks join these forums is because they want answers in plain English and not the somewhat vague documentation offered on MSDN. Sorry I asked such a silly question that caused your sarcasm to manifest itself. Regards, Steven.

I have searched high and low for an answer to this one. I'm sure someone has run into a similar situation. Basically, I set up a serial port with a ReadTimeout of 10 seconds; open it; send a "command" character to a serially attached device and expect an answer within this period of time. If data is received, the serialPort_DataReceived event handler fires and reads the data. However, I want to be able to notify the operator of a problem, should the external device not reply within 10 seconds. This could indicate the device is not attached or not powered up. Appreciate the help, Steve.

Thank you Henry for the reply. I will try what you recommend. I don't see many comments on the Web or MicroSoft on how to show forms in a panel control. Could be, I'm trying something that has potential problems that are not documented anywhere. As I mentioned, the forms show up in the panel control just fine. After switching between one and the other, the textboxes in those forms are no longer updated when expected. I'm using a PXI chassis from National Instruments to capture data from several voltage/current sources and as well as getting scope captures via a USB port from a Tektronix scope. Best Regards, Steve. BTW, I don't read medical books. Former medical student here... Then I got hooked on Math and programming and now this problem!

I have a main form that has a panel control and the user can select which of the two "child" forms to display in that panel control from a menu selection. Depending on which form is displayed in the panel, the app will display data from a Tektronix TDS-2024B scope or other data from an external DAQ (Data Acquisition module). The current code shows the forms without a problem. But if I switch between the two forms; data is no longer updated in the textboxes when I run a data capture routine for one form or the other. However, if I do not switch from one form display to the other after firing up the app, data is updated correctly. Example code for one of the form displays in the panel is: private void ScopeCapture_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { frmTDS2024BScopeCapture TDS = new frmTDS2024BScopeCapture(); TDS.MdiParent = this; TDS.TopLevel = false; TDS.Dock = DockStyle.Fill; //Container this.panel1.Controls.Clear(); this.panel1.Controls.Add(TDS); TDS.Show(); currentTest = "TDS"; ////TDS.tbFreq.Text = "4578223"; //test only } The code for the second form is identical, except for the form reference. Could I be having a problem with the Z-order of the panel when switching from one form to the other? Hope someone has run into this before and can shed some light on the issue. I tried not to clutter this post with too many details. If further code is required, please advise. Thanks in advance, Steve. P.S. I have Googled, searched forums, etc till I'm blue in this face with this one.

Yep! Worked like a champ! Thanks for your help. Regards, Steve.

Thanks for the suggestion. Not sure it will do the the trick, but will try it. If anyone else can put their two cents(tuppence) worth in, would be glad to hear from them. Thanks for the reply. Regards, Steve.

Is there a way to programmatically simulate a menu item being clicked? Thanks, Steve.

To all: Thanks for the reply. My apologies for breaking rule #1; wasn't aware of it... Regards, Steve.

Since I haven't tried this before, are there any major problems with launching an external process from a BackgroundWorker thread? Just thought I'd ask before I try and start pulling what little hair I have left. Thanks in advance, Steve.

Thanks for the info. Not much of this type of information around for grabs. Best Regards.:)

And I speak, read and write Portuguese and English. So what's the deal? Tradutores alguem?

I have yet to understand why I should choose Tabbed Controls over Property Sheets and vice-versa. Are there advantages of one over the other? How do they differ from a user's point of view? Any short answers to these questions? Thanks in advance. P.S. The answers may be obvious, but I somehow missed the outstanding diferences.

Does anyone have some code snippets on how to use this undocumented item? I have searched high and low for information; without results. Apparently, Microsoft doesn't want anyone to use it for some reason. I am trying to build a small app to work with a hard disk drive and am running Win XP. Thanks much in advance!

Kyle, I don't know if you are using VC++ 6.0 or .net. I also had a similar problem when porting VC++ 6.0 code to 2003 .net. Some kind soul informed me that I should use "iostream" instead of "iostream.h" and it worked! Somehow, MicroSoft dropped the ".h" in later releases of the compiler in this case. Good Luck.

Fabio, I also needed the information you seek. I downloaded the DiskId32 and also had compile problems; (4) errors. Were you able to get around the compile errors? The *.exe runs fine, but won't recompile under VC++ 6.0... Would appreciate any suggestions you may have. Thanks, Steve.

Although this is a subject with scarce literature available, I'm confident that someone out there has the answer. I'm trying to send an Inquiry command to the c: drive on my system to obtain the Model Number, Vendor Id, Firmware Rev. etc... Once I have scanned the bus for devices and used the CreateFile(); the Inquiry command returns nothing. Any suggestions and/or code snippets? P.S. The CreateFile() returns a handle to the device, but the Inquiry command doesn't work! Many Thanks.

I get compile errors when using iostream.h and fstream.h includes while using .Net Pro 2003, but not VC++6.0 nor .Net Architect 2003. How do I resolve this? S. Thompson