Display Animated Form (GIF) while a while is executed

With ProgressBar and Gauge you probably did not succeed because you would need to be updating FrmProgress .

Because with ProgressBar and / or Gauge ? I do not know what the behavior of an animated gif in Delphi is. I have tried to put it once, it was not native to using animated gifs and then replaced with other shapes, usually ProgressBar or Gauge because I always need to give feedback on the processing time.

To update the form I know three ways:

The first two ( Update and Refresh ) apply only to the form ( FrmProgress ) and only it handles the display updates. Unfortunately I do not know the difference between the two. But both make use of the Repaint method, which can also be called directly: FrmProgress.Repaint; .

In the last one, Application.ProcessMessages sends an order to the whole system to process all information that has not yet been processed in the display.

For all options a more in-depth information, by source, would be interesting.

On your issue, I do not know what's done with this IsRunningProcess method, nor why you use it in while , but actually it can be used to implement one of these methods I showed you and then remove the "locked" program impression.

It would be:

while IsRunningProcess('nome_do_processo') do
begin
  FrmProgress.Show;
  FrmPrincipal.Hide;
  FrmProcess.Refresh;
  // ou FrmProgress.Update;
  // ou Application.ProcessMessages; // esse, em threads, costuma dar problemas
end;
FrmProgress.Close;
Application.MessageBox('Operação concluída com sucesso!', 'Ferramentas', 
  MB_ICONEXCLAMATION + MB_OK);
FrmPrincipal.Visible := True;

A suggestion for testing

I do not know what to do with your IsRunningProcess function, but I'd venture to say that FrmProgress.Show; and FrmPrincipal.Hide; need not be within while . I believe it's unnecessary processing.

Try this:

FrmProgress.Show;
FrmPrincipal.Hide;
while IsRunningProcess('nome_do_processo') do
begin
  FrmProgress.Refresh;
  // ou FrmProgress.Update;
  // ou Application.ProcessMessages; // esse, em threads, costuma dar problemas
end;
FrmProgress.Close;
Application.MessageBox('Operação concluída com sucesso!', 'Ferramentas', 
  MB_ICONEXCLAMATION + MB_OK);
FrmPrincipal.Visible := True;

An easy way to make your form display the spinning image would be to use Sleep and ProcessMessages , otherwise it would be by using Threads

frmProgress.FormStyle := fsStayOnTop;
frmProgress.Postition := poScreenCenter;
frmProgress.Show

while IsRunningProcess('nome_do_processo') do
begin
  Sleep(200);
  Application.ProcessMessages;
end;

FrmProgress.Close;

Application.MessageBox('Operação concluída com sucesso!', 'Ferramentas', 
  MB_ICONEXCLAMATION + MB_OK);

FrmPrincipal.Visible := True;

To prevent users from interacting with the system, you can still implement the following:

procedure frmProgress.onDeActivate(Sender: TObject)
begin
    If frmProgress.CanFocus then
      frmProgress.SetFocus;
end;

Delegate processing to a background thread. You can do this using anonymous methods:

TThread.CreateAnonymousThread(procedure ()
  begin
    TThread.Synchronize (TThread.CurrentThread,
      procedure ()
      begin
      frmProgress.FormStyle := fsStayOnTop;
      frmProgress.Postition := poScreenCenter;
      frmProgress.Show
      end);
    while IsRunningProcess('nome_do_processo') do
    TThread.Synchronize (TThread.CurrentThread,
      procedure ()
      begin
          label1.text := formatFloat('#00.00% concluído...',AlgumValor);
          //Sendo que AlgumValor é uma var publica atualizada pelo 

'nome_do_processo'

end;

  end).Start;
frmProgress.close;

In the example, I monitor the progress of the process. Whenever you want to update the form call a Synchronize method.

In the example below I show a counter that updates the form every 40 numbers

TThread.CreateAnonymousThread(procedure ()
  begin
    TThread.Synchronize (TThread.CurrentThread,
      procedure ()
      begin
      frmProgress.FormStyle := fsStayOnTop;
      frmProgress.Postition := poScreenCenter;
      frmProgress.Show
      end);
    //while IsRunningProcess('nome_do_processo') do
for AlgumValor:=0 to MaxNum do
    If AlgumValor mod 40 = 0 then
        TThread.Synchronize (TThread.CurrentThread,
          procedure ()
          begin
              label1.text := formatFloat('#00.00% concluído...',AlgumValor/MaxNum);        
    end;
      end).Start;

frmProgress.close;