ShellExecute Question--Suspend a Window

[bookhead]

I'm trying to open a ".exe" file using the shellexecute command. The problem I'm running into follows: when my application passes the arguments and the ".exe" is run, the command prompt window appears and disappears promptly when the program is done. Is there a way to keep that window up (possibly with a "press a key to exit" message) to view the data displayed by the ".exe" when run from DOS? If this needs to be done by using shellexecute on a DOS window, is there still a way to pass and return parameters, and a non-manual way to exit the window? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Billy