I need to create a COM object in a Windows application, and call it. Since the call will take some time to execute, I wrap it in a deferToThread. I've found that, when I create the object inline, it works. However, when I defer it, it hangs up in the win32com.client.Dispatch call. I've tried several things, including digging into the guts of Dispatch -- the hangup occurs during the creation of the object. I've discussed this with Mark Hammond, who suggests one lead: "The Windows message loop is used by the COM marshalling process. IIRC, the first thread to initialize COM in a process is the thread in which single-threaded objects will always end up being called in. If a different thread creates the object, COM uses Windows messages to marshall all calls back to that main thread. IOW, your second thread makes a call - even to create the object - which results in that thread sending a windows message to the main thread to act on the request. What this probably means in practice is that twisted needs to use a reactor which calls MsgWaitForMultipleObjects() and runs a message loop when the function detects a new message is in the queue. I'm not sure if there is an existing reactor which does this." I'm posting this on the off chance that someone else has wandered into this corner of Windows arcana, and has come up with something useful. I'm about to give up on doing this "inside" the twisted app, and running it in a separate app that I'll call from the thread. TIA, -- Don Dwiggins Advanced Publishing Technology