It's a pain to try to find bugs in a sample code. See this. It works fine.

class WorkerThread extends Thread
{
    public void run()
    {
        while ( true )
            ;
    }

    public void printStatus()
    {
        System.out.println( 111 );
    }
}

public class MainThread
{
    WorkerThread t1, t2;

    public static void main( String[] args )
    {
        new MainThread().start();
    }

    public void start()
    {
        t1 = new WorkerThread();
        t2 = new WorkerThread();
        t1.start();
        t2.start();
        // even this is not printed...
        System.out.println( "print" );
        printWorkerStatus();
    }

    public void printWorkerStatus()
    {
        while ( t1.isAlive() || t2.isAlive() )
        {
            t1.printStatus(); // this print never happens
            t2.printStatus(); // this print never happens
            try
            {
                Thread.sleep( 40 * 1000 );
            }
            catch ( InterruptedException e )
            {
                // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }
}

and the output is like:

print
111
111
111
111 (...)

Hope this helps.

Marek

   If I assume you've done everything correctly, then yes, your code works
perfectly. Since it's not working perfectly, perhaps the assumption that
you've done everything correctly is invalid.

   Please post an SSCCE. http://mindprod.com/jgloss/sscce.html

   - Oliver