I have a VS 2005 winform with a toolstrip menu item that opens another form in dialog mode:

private void viewBatchesToolStripMenuItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

FrmBatch frmBatch = new FrmBatch();

frmBatch.ShowDialog();

}

When FrmBatch starts it runs a long-running query that takes about 10 seconds to complete and then loads a DataGridView with the data from the query.

During the loading process the screen looks terrible. After a few seconds, the parent form (FrmDialer) goes totally white. Finally, the query is done and FrmBatch loads its grid but there is bleed through of items from FrmDialer into FrmBatch. Furthermore, the part of FrmDialer that is not covered by FrmBatch has white areas on it and when FrmBatch is closed those white areas remain.

I have tried various this.Update() and this.Refresh() but nothing seems to quite work.

There has to be way to fix this very unprofessional looking UI. Help, please.

Thanks,

Paul

Use the BackgroundWorker to perform your long lasting task. It will execute the work in a different thread so it won't lock the user interface (letting it to repaint itself). If you want to know how to work with it there are plenty of articles/threads/tutorials around about it.

Regards,
Fábio

Use the BackgroundWorker to perform your long lasting task. It will execute the work in a different thread so it won't lock the user interface (letting it to repaint itself). If you want to know how to work with it there are plenty of articles/threads/tutorials around about it.

Regards,
Fábio

You can hide the main form before showing frmBatch.

You can use Show instead of ShowDialog.

You can use a BackGroundWorker and Show frmBatch in the DoWork event.