Thanks SixDegress! I didn't know that you had to place the QProgressBar into the layout before it was visible, this would be the reason I am not seeing it when the application starts the heavy lifting process.

I don't think I need to use processEvents at all but if I wanted to I think if I used it on the outer while loop I would get the intended response. Thank you very much for clearing that up for me! I have used QProgressDialog before so I had assumed they worked the same only one was a dialog with options while the other had no options just the progress bar.

Quick question however, if this is happening in MainWindow (which is sublcass of QMainWindow) do I just add it to the main layout. The MainWindow's central widget is a QSplitter so I am not sure how to do this because I want the progress bar to be centered in the main widget. Thanks for any additional help.