status/progress bars (revisited)

[Matt Hillebrand <hill9361 uidaho edu>]

I have been posting this question every few weeks for the past year, and I
have never received a response:

How do I force a status bar (or progress bar) to update when the computer
is really busy? I can tell the status bar to change right before I tell
the CPU to begin a real work-out, and no matter what I try, the thing
won't update until the latter CPU-intensive function is done. This
is rather annoying because I am trying to tell the user that the computer
is busy. This is really annoying, especially when I try to make the
progress bar move in activity mode, and it won't budge because the CPU is
busy. I can tell it start moving without stopping it, and it won't start
moving until the CPU-intensive function call is done!

Please enlighten me!

Thanks,

Matthew P. Hillebrand