Is there a way to halt a screen from painting until all the controls on the form are initialized

Shawn Burke responded to this question in a posting on microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.windowsforms newsgroup.

There is not currently a way to do this built into the framework, but WM_SETREDRAW will do what you’re looking for. It can’t be called recursively, so here’s code for a property you can add to your form to handle it. A VB sample is also available.

int paintFrozen;

private const int WM_SETREDRAW = 0xB;

[DllImport(''User32'')]
private static extern bool SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, int msg, int wParam, int lParam);

private bool FreezePainting 
{
  get { return paintFrozen > 0; }
  set {
    if (value && IsHandleCreated && this.Visible) 
    {
      if (0 == paintFrozen++) 
      {
        SendMessage(Handle, WM_SETREDRAW, 0, 0);
      }
    }
    if (!value) 
    {
      if (paintFrozen == 0)
      {
                                 return;
                           }

                           if (0 == --paintFrozen) 
      {
                                SendMessage(Handle, WM_SETREDRAW, 1, 0);
                                Invalidate(true);
                           }
                     }
                  }
}