Apparently DoEvents are required.
I placed about 25 of them in the app, several inside loops.

Did get an added bonus out of it.
Anytime there was a long pause between 'periods' I'd pause the app.

That let me find several cbo's that auto load other combos when clicked.
I set a global g_bLoaded to block that till things are set up.
It cut the loading time in half