Splash Screen waiting until thread finishes

Solution 1:

Same question, same answer:

The .NET framework has excellent built-in support for splash screens. Start a new WF project, Project + Add Reference, select Microsoft.VisualBasic. Add a new form, call it frmSplash. Open Project.cs and make it look like this:

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using Microsoft.VisualBasic.ApplicationServices;

namespace WindowsFormsApplication1 {
  static class Program {
    [STAThread]
    static void Main(string[] args) {
      Application.EnableVisualStyles();
      Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
      new MyApp().Run(args);
    }
  }
  class MyApp : WindowsFormsApplicationBase {
    protected override void OnCreateSplashScreen() {
      this.SplashScreen = new frmSplash();
    }
    protected override void OnCreateMainForm() {
      // Do your time consuming stuff here...
      //...
      System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(3000);
      // Then create the main form, the splash screen will close automatically
      this.MainForm = new Form1();
    }
  }
}

Solution 2:

You've entered dangerous territory by creating UI prior to your call to Application.Run(). Application.Run is essentially your program's message pump. By displaying the UI before you start the application's message pump, you make typical UI interaction effectively impossible on the premature UI. For a splash screen this may not seem relevant, but it will matter if (e.g.) there's a request to make the splash screen disappear if it's clicked on, or you want to use a BackgroundWorker.

These can be worked around by creating a message pump in your splash screen (by making it modal via a call to ShowDialog() instead of Show()), but that's treating the symptom when treating the problem really isn't that difficult.

I'd strongly encourage nobugz's answer in this case. The framework provides the support you need. While features in the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace aren't always very discoverable to C# programmers, they can be a real timesaver and lifesaver for cases like this.

Good luck!