To close a Messagebox after few seconds automatically OR How to add timer to messagebox

you can get this thing work as you expect. But it is going to be very weird method to show progress. You have to create a separte thread to handle the message box closing stuffs. Because a message box is of a modal dialog. Once invoked, without closing you can not execute next line of code. So first you have to write a thread function. In that Write the code to get the message box window handle as below and then close it

UINT ThreadFun(LPVOID lpvParam)
{
    Sleep( 4000 );// Waiting untill the message box gets invoked(you can use an effective synch method also)
    HWND hWnd = FindWindow( 0, "Initilization"/*Window Title*/ );
    Sleep( 4000 );// Wait for some second
    CloseWidnow( hWnd );
}
void ShowMsg()
{
    :
    AfxBeginThread( ThreadFun, 0 );
    MessageBox(NULL,"Initilizing the Software","Initilization",MB_OK);
    :
}

But this code will for sure crash unless you handle the synchronizantion effeciently.

Now coming to a real solution to your issue, better you use a modless dialog which shows the progress message
http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/modeless_dialogs.html[^]
and send the message WM_CLOSE to this dialog after some time or once your s/w initialization is done