i have used the api's to walk through the windows - but even with if 
getparent(whwnd) = 0 all windows are returned - bout 3 for Visual Basic 
and 3 for winamp! i was also using the iswindowactive and iswindowvisible 
api's, but it kept returning more than one window per running application!

how would i go about resolving this?

Pierre du Toit