when i run my program what does it mean to get a wait icon upon running the program and thats all i get

it means the window that the mouse is over is probably not checking/clearing its message queue and so windows indicates this by showing the hourglass cursor

is your window visible?
make sure you have maximised/restored your main window by creating it with the WS_VISIBLE style or by calling ShowWindow( hMyHandle, style ) where style is one of these: SW_MAXIMIZE, SW_RESTORE, SW_SHOW, SW_SHOWDEFAULT or SW_SHOWMAXIMIZED

are you checking your messages?
is code like the following being reached/executed?

MSG msg;while( GetMessage( &msg, NULL, 0, 0 ) ){    TranslateMessage( &msg );    DispatchMessage( &msg );} 

hope this helps u in some way...