Are there any programs besides SAP that can stop an hourglass?

[RalphTheCow]

Do any of you programmers out there know the basics of how you can stop a program that is hourglassing (not responding to user input) while performing some time-consuming operation? I always thought that one of the definitions of a real-time system was that it could do that. Sometimes IE can do that, i.e. sometimes the stop button works and sometimes it doesn't.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

i always use ctrl+pause/break when i write sql statements that try to insert infinite db records. other than that, i dont really know what you are trying to ask