Possible to construct form on background thread, then display on UI thread

Question

UPDATE: Just to summarize what my question has boiled down to:

I was hoping that constructing .NET forms and controls did NOT create any window handles -- hoping tha

Answer 1

In general, properties of the form need to be accessed from the same thread running the message loop. That means, in order to construct the form on another thread, you would need to marshal any calls to actually set properties using BeginInvoke. This is true for property sets from the constructor, too, if they end up generating a message that needs to be processed (as is happening to you now).

Even if you get that to work, what does it buy you? It will be a bit slower, not faster, overall.

Perhaps just show a splash screen while this form is loading?

Alternatively, review why your form takes so long to construct in the first place. It's not common for this to take seconds.