Dialog in Frame: Buttons disabled

Bassically I have a MFC app in which I have a MainFrame with a childWindow being a dialog.
My problem is that buttons on this window are disabled and I can't seem to re-enable them.
Is the dialog designed to only work fully when you DoModal()? Or should I be able to use it normally as a child to a frame?

Thanks in advance.

Moved to windows forum, since this is all win32 specific.

IIRC........

MFC disables any controls without a message handler (entry in the frames(?) MESSAGE_MAP section).

Are you using a dialogbar (CDialogbar) or CDialog as a base class?




I also put child dlgs as members of the view. (EDIT: which could be totally the wrong place......)

Test for a valid (check not NULL) HWND with GetSafeHwnd()
If valid
call ShowWindow() to make them visible again.
else
call Create()