Progress Bar - Threading - Minimizing Window

[timmeh_041]

Hey guys,

Now I know what I am about to describe is generally considered bad practice, so just bare with me as I describe it.

Part of my application deals with creating a number of pivot tables. I pull data from a local database, and store it in a datatable. From here, the data is processed and eventually a pivot table is returned. On small data sets it works well, but on some larger one there is a few seconds of "nothing" until the table is shown.

After a few iterations of trying things to display some form of progress I have ended up with a form with nothing but a progress bar running on it. I spawn a new thread, and run it. It works exactly like I hoped. However, when I call the thread.abort() method to terminate the thread, occasionally, the main form will minimize. I tired having me.show() aftre the .abort() to bring the form into view again, but it appears not to have helped.

Now I understand that it is better practice to have worker background threads, and the main thread for UI, but is there a simple way of ensuring that the main form does not close?

    Private Sub LoadProgressForm()
        Dim progressForm As New ProgressBar
        progressForm.ShowDialog()
    End Sub

   Private Sub DoButton_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles ViewButton.Click

            Dim t As New Thread(AddressOf LoadProgressForm)
            t.Start()
            'code that does stuff to do with pivoting

            t.abort()
            me.show()

   End Sub

Thanks