Ted Gould wrote: I'd say the following note from MSDN explains it all: --------------- Note The _popen function returns an invalid file handle, if used in a Windows program, that will cause the program to hang indefinitely. _popen works properly in a Console application. To create a Windows application that redirects input and output, read the section "Creating a Child Process with Redirected Input and Output" in the Win32 SDK. --------------- If you're interested in some code that does work with Win32 I'd be happy to provide it (I have some code lying around that would only need minimal changes).