Stuck in neverland Loop Going nowhere

[GeorgeAtkins]

VS 2003 using VB.NET
I'm writing a program that reads text entries from a one file and matches
them against values in an XML document. However, the code seems to just sit
in the loop and never get anywhere, yet no errors occur. I tried this
hard-coding a title known to be in the XML file and it worked ok. It seems to
"hang" when the title is not found, but that's just a guess. Here is the code:

Imports System.Xml
Imports System.Text
Imports System.Xml.XPat h
Imports System.io

Public Class Form1
Inherits System.Windows. Forms.Form
Public ARList As New ArrayList ' holds the advanced reader text file
Public ARFile As String = "C:\accentdocs\ testinfo.exp"
Public ACCFile As String = "C:\accentdocs\ tlcrsi.xml"
Public Doc As XmlDocument = New XmlDocument
Public RootNode As New TreeNode("C:\")
Private Sub btnSubmit_Click (ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As
System.EventArg s) Handles btnSubmit.Click

Try
' set up the AR variables
Dim StartPos, TabPos As Integer
Dim Title As String
Dim ARLine As String
Dim srAR As System.IO.Strea mReader = New StreamReader(AR File)
Dim X As Integer, I As String
' set up the Accent variables and load document
Doc.PreserveWhi tespace = True
Doc.Load(ACCFil e)
Dim snode As XmlNode

' fill arraylist with AR titles
I = srAR.ReadLine ' throw away the first line of headings.
Do Until srAR.Peek() = -1 ' read AR file until EOF
ARLine = srAR.ReadLine 'grab entire row
TabPos = InStr(9, ARLine, vbTab) ' look for tab
ARList.Add(Mid( ARLine, 9, TabPos - 9)) ' extract title into list
Loop

Debug.WriteLine ("AR list filled: " & ARList.Count.To String)
Debug.WriteLine (ARList(0)) ' read the first entry

For Each arbk As String In ARList
Debug.WriteLine ("Looking for: " & arbk)
' HERE IS WHERE THE PROGRAM JUST STOPS, IT SEEMS
Dim root As XmlNodeList =
Doc.SelectNodes (".//mrcb[descendant::mrc b245-a='" & arbk & "']")
Debug.WriteLine (root.Count) ' there should only be a few hits
found
Dim book As XmlNode
For Each book In root ' There should only be a few
Debug.WriteLine (book.InnerText )
snode = book.SelectSing leNode(".//mrcb590-a")
snode.InnerText += ", GKA " & Now()
Debug.WriteLine ("Found: " & snode.InnerText )
Next
'MsgBox("Moving on to the next book!")
Next arbk

' When done, write out the revised XML document.
Doc.PreserveWhi tespace = True
Dim wtr As XmlTextWriter = New
XmlTextWriter(" C:\AccentDocs\R EVpmsrecs.xml", Encoding.Unicod e)
Doc.WriteTo(wtr )
wtr.Close()
Debug.WriteLine ("All done!")
Doc = Nothing

Catch ex As Exception
MsgBox(ex.Messa ge)
End Try
End
End Sub

Perhaps somebody sees something I'm doing wrong? I wanted to compile the
Xpath statements, but I don't think I can, since I have to recreate the
nodelist and node within each loop.
Thanks for any observations!
George