I want to show a little loading form while some time consuming operations are beeing performed in die main UI. More specific I'm importing an UI changing theme that will take a while (2-3 secounds) to perform it's changes.
However, it's no problem if the UI is blocked while it's loading but to instruct the user to wait I want to display an WaitForm that is beeing closed if the UI Thread has finished the loading process.
Here's how I thought it might work:
static class WaitDialogManager
{
private static bool _isVisible { get; set; } = false;
private static Task _task;
public static void ShowDialog()
{
if (!_isVisible)
{
_task = Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
{
WaitDialog _dialog = new WaitDialog();
_isVisible = true;
_dialog.Show();
do
{
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(10);
} while (_isVisible);
_dialog.Hide();
_dialog.Dispose();
_dialog = null;
});
}
}
public static void CloseDialog()
{
_isVisible = false;
}
}
private void UpdateUI()
{
WaitDialogManager.ShowDialog();
SetUpUI();
WaitDialogManager.CloseDialog();
}
Unfortunately it seems like the different thread has no effect?! Form is beeing loaded and showed but all winforms consits of white rectangles and no marquee progress bar is beeing showed.
Why is this? And how can I change the construct to make it work?
Thanks in advance, ADP
As stated above creating a thread is a stupid idea! (Thanks to those giving people minus just because they are beginners and lack some knowlegde on different topics - as it's normal for beginners. Thank god there are somewhere such perfect people who never had to lern and knew everything from the moment of birth...)
However, a simple Refresh call ensured the form to be visible. It's doing exactly what I needed.
This code is running from other thread than the thread it was created on.
Thread gets create from the constructor of StartScanning
public StartScanning()
{
InitializeComponent();
Thread _IMSS_THREAD = new Thread(_IMSS_START_SCANNING);
_IMSS_THREAD.IsBackground = true;
_IMSS_THREAD.Start();
}
Main form
StartScanning _IMSS_START_SCANNING = StartScanning._IMSS_CREATE_CONTROLE();
_IMSS_START_SCANNING._IMSS_ON_ALL_SCAN_COMPLETE += _IMSS_ON_SCAN_COMPLETE;
this._IMSS_MainPanel.Controls.Add(_IMSS_START_SCANNING);
On scan complete user control, this code is in main form:
ScanComplete _IMSS_ON_COMPLETE = new ScanComplete();
public void _IMSS_ON_SCAN_COMPLETE(ref List<BetterListViewGroup> _IMSS_LIST_OF_GROUP_TARGETS)
{
List<BetterListViewGroup> IMSS_LIST_OF_GROUP_TARGETS = _IMSS_LIST_OF_GROUP_TARGETS;
_IMSS_ON_COMPLETE._IMSS_AddRangeTargets(ref IMSS_LIST_OF_GROUP_TARGETS);
this.Invoke(new MethodInvoker(() =>
{
this._IMSS_MainPanel.Controls.Clear();
this._IMSS_MainPanel.Controls.Add(_IMSS_ON_COMPLETE);
}));
}
If you take a look on this code, it runs OK but it's supposed to throw
Cross-thread operation not valid, cause when we start the program this UserControl
ScanComplete _IMSS_ON_COMPLETE = new ScanComplete();
Get created on the main thread (it's global) and when we use
_IMSS_ON_COMPLETE._IMSS_AddRangeTargets(ref IMSS_LIST_OF_GROUP_TARGETS);
It adds a list of groups of listview to it, and it's out of the invoke section, but it's not throwing thread error, Why it's not throwing errors?
Try this in constructor of form:
public StartScanning()
{
InitializeComponent();
StartScanning.CheckForIllegalCrossThreadCalls = false;
}
Remember that this is not proper way to do this but this will help you to solve your problem. Search for Thread safe calling.
UpDate1:
More detail: Thread 1 and 2 must be continuously active. Thread 1 is updating its GUI and doing HTTP POSTs. Thread 2 is using HTTPListener for incoming HTTP POSTs, and supplying that data to Thread 1. So the GUI needs to be display with current Textbox values and updated when Thread 2 supplies the data. Will Servy's or another approach allow both Threads to do their work concurrently? It appears the main thread waits for Thread 2 to complete it's work. It then takes the prepWork and does work with it. I coded in Servy's example but I couldn't find a definition for Run() with the Task class. It's library has no such method. I'm using Net 4.0 on VS 2010. Is there an equivalent method to use? Start() didn't compile either and I understand you can only run the Task once. Thanks for any additional assistance you can share.
Original Question:
I've tested code that will successfully kick off my event and update my GUI textbox in an event handler if the event is kicked off in what I understand as the UI Thread 1. When I attempt to call a Thread 1 method Fire() from my independent Thread 2 method PrepareDisplay(), Fire() is called and in turns fires off the event. I put in some Thread-safe call code (modeled from MSDN tutorial on Thread-Safety in WinForms), but the event handler still doesn't update the Textbox. When stepping thru the code, it appears that the InvokeRequired is false. My eventual goal is to pass data from Thread 2 to UI Thread 1 and update the Textboxes with the new data. I don't understand why the Thread-safe code isn't enabling this. Can someone help me understand this better, and what I have neglected? Below is the code:
Thank you very much,
namespace TstTxtBoxUpdate
{
static class Program
{
/// <summary>
/// The main entry point for the application.
/// </summary>
[STAThread]
static void Main()
{
Aag_PrepDisplay aag_Prep1 = new Aag_PrepDisplay();
Thread AagPrepDisplayThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(aag_Prep1.PrepareDisplay));
AagPrepDisplayThread.Start();
while(!AagPrepDisplayThread.IsAlive)
;
Thread.Sleep(1000);
Application.EnableVisualStyles();
Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
Application.Run(new SetOperation());
}
}
}
namespace TstTxtBoxUpdate
{
// Thread 1: UI
public partial class SetOperation : Form
{
private string text;
public event Action<object> OnChDet;
delegate void SetTextCallback(string text);
private Thread demoThread = null;
public SetOperation()
{
InitializeComponent();
OnChDet += chDetDisplayHandler;
}
public void FireEvent(Aag_PrepDisplay aagPrep)
{
OnChDet(mName);
}
private void chDetDisplayHandler(object name)
{
this.demoThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(this.ThreadProcSafe));
this.demoThread.Start();
}
private void ThreadProcSafe()
{
this.SetText("402.5");
}
private void SetText(string text)
{
if(this.actFreqChan1.InvokeRequired)
{
SetTextCallback d = new SetTextCallback(SetText);
this.Invoke(d, new object[] { text });
}
else
{
this.actFreqChan1.Text = text;
}
}
}
}
namespace TstTxtBoxUpdate
{
// Thread 2: Data prepare
public class Aag_PrepDisplay
{
#region Fields
private Aag_PrepDisplay mAagPrep;
#endregion Fields
#region Properties
public Aag_PrepDisplay AagPrepDisp;
public Aag_PrepDisplay AagPrep
{
get { return mAagPrep; }
set { mAagPrep = value; }
}
#endregion Properties
#region Methods
public void PrepareDisplay()
{
mAagPrep = new Aag_PrepDisplay();
SetOperation setOp1 = new SetOperation();
setOp1.FireEvent(mAagPrep); // calls Thread 1 method that will fire the event
}
#endregion Methods
}
}
You're getting to the point of calling InvokeRequired when your main thread is still on Thread.Sleep. It hasn't even gotten to the point of creating a message loop yet (which is one in Application.Run) so there is no message loop for Invoke to marshal a call to.
There are all sorts of issues here. You're creating multiple instance of your form, one that you show, and an entirely different form that you're setting the text of. You clearly did not intend to do this; you want to have a single form that you're setting the text for.
Your main thread should not be doing a busywait until your first thread finishes. It likely shouldn't be there at all. If it weren't for the fact that your new thread is creating yet another new thread, the fact that your main thread is blocking until the second thread finishes and the second thread is trying to marshall a call to the main thread, it would normally deadlock. You shouldn't really be creating a second new thread here at all, but this is a case of two bugs "cancelling each other out". It prevents the deadlock, but both are still incorrect, and inhibit your ability to get to a working solution.
You also shouldn't have the Thread.Sleep in the main thread at all. I have no idea what purpose that's trying to achieve.
If you're goal is simply to start some long running work before showing the first form and then to update that form when you have your results, you're doing way more work than you need to do.
To do this we can have our form accept a Task in its constructor representing the completion of the long running work. It can add a continuation to that task to set a label, or a textbox, or do...whatever, with the results of that Task.
public class SetOperation : Form
{
private Label label;
public SetOperation(Task<string> prepWork)
{
prepWork.ContinueWith(t =>
{
label.Text = t.Result;
}, TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext());
}
}
Then the main thread simply needs to start a new Task to do the given work in a thread pool thread and pass that in to our form:
[STAThread]
static void Main()
{
Task<string> prepWork = Task.Run(() => DoWork());
Application.Run(new SetOperation(prepWork));
}
private static string DoWork()
{
Thread.Sleep(1000);//placeholder for real work
return "hi";
}
And we're done. Note that DoWork should probably be in its own class designed for handling your business logic; it probably shouldn't be stuck into the Program class.
Our program works fine, until someone locks the computer or the screen-saver pops up (but not ctrl+alt+delete). Once the computer is unlocked/the screen saver is closed, the application stops drawing everything except the title bar, and stops responding to input - it displays a mostly-white window which can't be moved or closed.
(Example of application freezing - the mountains are from my desktop background)
If we let it sit for about 5~10 minutes, it comes back to life, and doesn't hang again (even after locking the computer/screen saver popup) until the application is restarted.
It's difficult to debug, because it doesn't happen when the program is started from Visual Studio, only when the .exe is manually opened.
It only happens when the splash-screen is shown - if I remove the code to show the splash-screen, it stops happening. We need the splash-screen, however.
I've tried every suggestion on this page; the only one this doesn't happen with is using Microsoft.VisualBasic.WindowsFormsApplicationBase, but that causes all sorts of other problems.
Information about this on the Internet appears to be scarce - has anyone run into a similar problem before?
Here is the relevant code:
//Multiple programs use this login form, all have the same issue
public partial class LoginForm<TMainForm>
where TMainForm : Form, new()
{
private readonly Action _showLoadingForm;
public LoginForm(Action showLoadingForm)
{
...
_showLoadingForm = showLoadingForm;
}
private void btnLogin_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
...
this.Hide();
ShowLoadingForm(); //Problem goes away when commenting-out this line
new TMainForm().ShowDialog();
this.Close();
}
private void ShowLoadingForm()
{
Thread loadingFormThread = new Thread(o => _showLoadingForm());
loadingFormThread.IsBackground = true;
loadingFormThread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
loadingFormThread.Start();
}
}
Here is an example of one of the _showLoadingForm actions used in one of the programs:
public static bool _showSplash = true;
public static void ShowSplashScreen()
{
//Ick, DoEvents! But we were having problems with CloseSplashScreen being called
//before ShowSplashScreen - this hack was found at
//https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48916/multi-threaded-splash-screen-in-c/48946#48946
using(SplashForm splashForm = new SplashForm())
{
splashForm.Show();
while(_showSplash)
Application.DoEvents();
splashForm.Close();
}
}
//Called in MainForm_Load()
public static void CloseSplashScreen()
{
_showSplash = false;
}
Splash Screen Issues
The DoEvents thing is very undesirable and doesn't necessarily accomplish what you think it does. DoEvents tell the CLR to attend to the windows message loop (for the splash screen), but doesn't necessarily offer up any processing time to other threads. Thread.Sleep() will offer other threads a chance to process, but won't necessarily allow the windows message loop for your splash screen to continue pumping messages. So you really need both if you must use a loop, but in a minute I'm going to recommend getting away from this loop altogether. In addition to that loop issue, I don't see any explicit way the splash thread is being cleaned up. You need some kind of Thread.Join() or Thread.Abort() happening somewhere.
Instead of using a Application.DoEvents() loop, I like to use a ManualResetEvent to synchronize the splash forms start up with the calling thread. That way the ShowSplash() method doesn't return until the splash is shown. Anytime after that we are obviously ok to close it down as we know it was finished being shown.
Here's a thread with a few good examples:.NET Multi-threaded Splash Screens in C#
Here's how I modified my favorite example, that #AdamNosfinger posted, to include a ManualResetEvent to synchronize the ShowSplash method with the splash screen thread:
public partial class FormSplash : Form
{
private static Thread _splashThread;
private static FormSplash _splashForm;
// This is used to make sure you can't call SplashScreenClose before the SplashScreenOpen has finished showing the splash initially.
static ManualResetEvent SplashScreenLoaded;
public FormSplash()
{
InitializeComponent();
// Signal out ManualResetEvent so we know the Splash form is good to go.
SplashScreenLoaded.Set();
}
/// <summary>
/// Show the Splash Screen (Loading...)
/// </summary>
public static void ShowSplash()
{
if (_splashThread == null)
{
// Setup our manual reset event to syncronize the splash screen thread and our main application thread.
SplashScreenLoaded = new ManualResetEvent(false);
// show the form in a new thread
_splashThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(DoShowSplash));
_splashThread.IsBackground = true;
_splashThread.Start();
// Wait for the splash screen thread to let us know its ok for the app to keep going.
// This next line will not return until the SplashScreen is loaded.
SplashScreenLoaded.WaitOne();
SplashScreenLoaded.Close();
SplashScreenLoaded = null;
}
}
// called by the thread
private static void DoShowSplash()
{
if (_splashForm == null)
_splashForm = new FormSplash();
// create a new message pump on this thread (started from ShowSplash)
Application.Run(_splashForm);
}
/// <summary>
/// Close the splash (Loading...) screen
/// </summary>
public static void CloseSplash()
{
// need to call on the thread that launched this splash
if (_splashForm.InvokeRequired)
_splashForm.Invoke(new MethodInvoker(CloseSplash));
else
Application.ExitThread();
}
}
Main Form Issues
It looks as though you are launching your mainform from your login window using ShowDialog and then closing the login form. Have I understood correctly? This is not good if so. ShowDialog is intended for child windows of your application and wants to have an owner window, if you don't specify an owner form in the method arguments the currently active window is assumed to be the owner. See MSDN
So your main form is assuming the login form is its parent, but you close the login form shortly after showing the main form. So I'm not sure what state the application is left in at that point. You should consider using a standard Form.Show() method instead and simply adjusting the Form properties to appear like a dialog if this is the desired outcome (ex: BorderStyle, MaximizeBox, MinimizeBox, ControlBox, TopMost).
IMPORTANT EDIT: Ok I'm human, I messed up and forgot ShowDialog was a blocking method. While that does negate the owner handle issue, I still recommend not using ShowDialog for your main application form unless you can provide a significant justification for it that is not appearance or threading related (as those should be fixed with other techniques). The advice is still sound, despite the misstep on my part.
Possible Painting Issues
You did not specify which controls you were using or if you were doing any custom painting in your application. But you need to keep in mind some windows handles will be forcibly closed when you lock the computer. For example if you have some custom painted controls and are caching fonts, brushes or other GDI resources you need to have some try { ... } catch { ... } blocks in your code that dispose of and then rebuild the cached GDI resources when an exception is raised during painting. I've run into this before where I was custom painting a list box and caching some GDI objects. If you have any custom painting code anywhere in your app, including in the splash screen, please double check all GDI objects are nicely disposed/cleaned up.
After adding a few lines of code to the code snippets above, I could compile a working program. However, I could not reproduce the problem (Windows 7 Starter). I tried locking the computer, and starting the screen saver, too. I did this while the splash screen was active, and in other situations, but the main window always remained responsive. I think there must be something else going on here, probably during the initialization of the main window.
Here is the code, maybe it helps the others figure out the problem.
using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Windows.Forms;
public class MainForm : Form
{
//Here is an example of one of the _showLoadingForm actions used in one of the programs:
public static bool _showSplash = true;
public static void ShowSplashScreen()
{
//Ick, DoEvents! But we were having problems with CloseSplashScreen being called
//before ShowSplashScreen - this hack was found at
//http://stackoverflow.com/questions/48916/multi-threaded-splash-screen-in-c/48946#48946
using(SplashForm splashForm = new SplashForm())
{
splashForm.Show();
while(_showSplash)
Application.DoEvents();
splashForm.Close();
}
}
//Called in MainForm_Load()
public static void CloseSplashScreen()
{
_showSplash = false;
}
public MainForm()
{
Text = "MainForm";
Load += delegate(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Thread.Sleep(3000);
CloseSplashScreen();
};
}
}
//Multiple programs use this login form, all have the same issue
public class LoginForm<TMainForm> : Form where TMainForm : Form, new()
{
private readonly Action _showLoadingForm;
public LoginForm(Action showLoadingForm)
{
Text = "LoginForm";
Button btnLogin = new Button();
btnLogin.Text = "Login";
btnLogin.Click += btnLogin_Click;
Controls.Add(btnLogin);
//...
_showLoadingForm = showLoadingForm;
}
private void btnLogin_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
//...
this.Hide();
ShowLoadingForm(); //Problem goes away when commenting-out this line
new TMainForm().ShowDialog();
this.Close();
}
private void ShowLoadingForm()
{
Thread loadingFormThread = new Thread(o => _showLoadingForm());
loadingFormThread.IsBackground = true;
loadingFormThread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
loadingFormThread.Start();
}
}
public class SplashForm : Form
{
public SplashForm()
{
Text = "SplashForm";
}
}
public class Program
{
public static void Main()
{
var loginForm = new LoginForm<MainForm>(MainForm.ShowSplashScreen);
loginForm.Visible = true;
Application.Run(loginForm);
}
}
Several years later (with the code no longer in front of me), I'll add an answer for anyone else who experiences this problem.
The issue turned out to be exactly as Hans Passant had guessed. The problem was that, due to some incredibly obscure and innocuous bugs in the .Net framework, InvokeRequired can sometimes return false when it should return true, causing code that should run on the GUI thread to run in the background (which, due to some more obscure and innocuous bugs, causes the behavior I was seeing).
The solution is to not rely on InvokeRequired, using a hack similar to this:
void Main()
{
Thread.Current.Name = "GuiThread";
...
}
bool IsGuiThread()
{
return Thread.Current.Name == "GuiThread";
}
//Later, call IsGuiThread() to determine if GUI code is being run on GUI thread
This solution, as well as an extremely in-depth look at the causes of the issue, was found here.
since there is no working example
can you try removing Application.DoEvents(); and inserting a thread.sleep?
Application.DoEvents(); let say can be very evil.
From the quick scan I did of your code, it looks like the key to your problem might be using
Application.Run(_splashForm);
Ideally you would use that inside a thread, but maybe it would work in conjunction with your DoEvents too. Sorry if you are doing that and I just missed it...
In our application we had some similar problems with the splash screen. We wanted to have a splash screen with an animated gif (don't blame on me, it was a management decision). That only works correctly, when the splashScreen has its own message loop. Because I think the DoEvents is the key to your problem, I show you, how we solved it. Hopefully it will help you to solve your problem!
We're going to show the splash screen in that way:
// AnimatedClockSplashScreen is a special form from us, it can be any other!
// Our form is set to be TopMost
splashScreen = new AnimatedClockSplashScreen();
Task.Factory.StartNew(() => Application.Run(splashScreen));
The splash screen is a simple containing the animated gif of a clock. It doesn't have any loop, so it doesn't steel any time.
When the splash needs to be closed, we do it in that way:
if (splashScreen != null)
{
if (splashScreen.IsHandleCreated)
{
try
{
splashScreen.Invoke(new MethodInvoker(() => splashScreen.Close()));
}
catch (InvalidOperationException)
{
}
}
splashScreen.Dispose();
splashScreen = null;
}
remove this line, you don't need it, You are forcing it to a single thread when the default is mta. Take the default.
loadingFormThread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
change the following:
using(SplashForm splashForm = new SplashForm())
{
splashForm.Show();
while(_showSplash)
Application.DoEvents();
splashForm.Close();
}
to:
SplashForm splashForm = new SplashForm())
splashForm.Show();
Change this:
public static void CloseSplashScreen()
{
_showSplash = false;
}
to this:
public static void CloseSplashScreen()
{
splashForm.Close();
}
Here's a shot in the dark: when we idle, we also ask the thread to go to sleep. I'm not sure that this will help, but it's worth a shot:
while(_showSplash) {
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500);
Application.DoEvents();
}
Have you tried using a WaitHandle for showing the form in the thread?
Something like:
EventWaitHandle _waitHandle = new AutoResetEvent(false);
public static void ShowSplashScreen()
{
using(SplashForm splashForm = new SplashForm())
{
splashForm.Show();
_waitHandle.WaitOne();
splashForm.Close();
}
}
//Called in MainForm_Load()
public static void CloseSplashScreen()
{
_waitHandle.Set();
}
I think your problem is because you are using Form.ShowDialog, not Application.Run. ShowDialog runs a restricted message loop that runs on top of the main message loop and ignores some windows messages.
Something like this should work:
static class Program
{
/// <summary>
/// The main entry point for the application.
/// </summary>
[STAThread]
static void Main()
{
Application.EnableVisualStyles();
Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault( false );
Application.Run( new MainForm() );
}
}
public partial class MainForm: Form
{
FormSplash dlg = null;
void ShowSplashScreen()
{
var t = new Thread( () =>
{
using ( dlg = new FormSplash() ) dlg.ShowDialog();
}
);
t.SetApartmentState( ApartmentState.STA );
t.IsBackground = true;
t.Start();
}
void CloseSplashScreen()
{
dlg.Invoke( ( MethodInvoker ) ( () => dlg.Close() ) );
}
public MainForm()
{
ShowSplashScreen();
InitializeComponent();
Thread.Sleep( 3000 ); // simulate big form
CloseSplashScreen();
}
}
I'm using a Splash Screen from Here. I love how simple it is. But the problem with it is that the splash screen doesn't go away until I click on it. When run within the IDE it works fine. Any ideas? I'd attach the code here but its not inserting properly for some reason.
private System.Windows.Forms.Timer timer1;
//private Splash sp=null;
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
Thread th = new Thread(new ThreadStart(DoSplash));
//th.ApartmentState = ApartmentState.STA;
//th.IsBackground=true;
th.Start();
Thread.Sleep(3000);
th.Abort();
Thread.Sleep(1000);
}
private void DoSplash()
{
Splash sp = new Splash();
sp.ShowDialog();
}
private void timer1_Tick(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
// sp.Close();
}
First of all, the way the splash screen on that page is done, using Thread.Abort, is not the right way to do things.
Never call Thread.Abort, unless you're in the process of shutting down the AppDomain the thread lives in.
Let me reiterate that for emphasis. The only time you should call Thread.Abort is when you know enough about Thread.Abort and how it behaves to know that you should never call it.
Take a look at this other question on StackOverflow: Multi-Threaded splash screen in c#?.
If you want to keep your existing solution, a possible better way would be to drop a timer into the splash screen form, set its timer to the time you want the splash screen to stay on screen, and call Close in its Tick event handler.
In the same venue, I would simply fire off that original thread, and remove the other lines.
In other words, from the first code block on that page, I would keep these two lines:
Thread th = new Thread(new ThreadStart(DoSplash));
th.Start();
Couple that with that timer on the form that makes the form self-closing, and you're in way better shape than trying to get to grips with Thread.Abort.
Which you should not call.
The DoSplash should probably call sp.Show() instead of sp.ShowDialog()
But calling Sleep(x000) form your main thread to show a splash screen isn't very efficient, and Thread.Abort() should be reserved for better use too.
A better approach is to close your SplashForm with a Timer and set a minimum delay. On startup you can Show() and Update() the SplahForm and continue to load stuff. The timer event won't fire until the MainForm is finished initializing and enters the EventLoop. No threads needed, and the MainForm doesn't have to be involved either.
Just to give you the main ingredients of a MessageLoop driven SplashForm:
public partial class SplashForm : Form
{
// default stuff
public static void Splash()
{
var s = new SplashForm();
s.Show();
s.Update();// force paint
}
private void SplashForm_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
Timer t = new Timer();
t.Interval = 1; // wait for EventLoop
t.Tick += GoAway;
t.Enabled = true;
}
private void GoAway(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
this.Close();
}
}
and then, in Program.cs,
Application.EnableVisualStyles();
Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
SplashForm.Splash();
Application.Run(new MainForm());
That's an ugly implementation. You should check out this SO thread. That describes how to use the VisualBasic.NET namespace from C# and the OnCreateSplashScreen method to do a much cleaner splash screen implementation.