Something like this should do:

using System;
using System.Windows.Forms;

class Class1 : Form
{
   bool firsttime = true;
   protected override void OnShown(EventArgs e)
   {
       if (firsttime)
       {
           firsttime = false;
           //  ##put your code here##
           MessageBox.Show("I've been shown! (for the first time)");
       }
       base.OnShown(e);
   }
   static void Main(string[] args)
   {
       Application.Run(new Class1());
   }
}

If you need more help, you'll need to post some code.  Please follow
this guidelines:

http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/complete.html

Mach

Hi Dave,

When a Form is loaded, it's Load event is fired first. The Form won't show
until all lines of code in its Load event handler finish executing. After
that, the Form's Activated event is fired and then the Shown event.

If the Form does some time-consuming work in the Activated or Shown event
handler, the UI of the Form will be blocked, i.e. all controls on the Form
are not painted properly or not responsive. This is because the main UI
thread is busy and doesn't have a chance to paint/refresh the UI of the
Form.

To show a Form and then do some time-consuming work without blocking the
UI, I suggest that you do the time-consuming work in a separate thread. You
can create a Thread instance or call the BeginInvoke method on the delegate
to the time-consuming method to do it, if you're using .NET 1.x.

If you're using .NET 2.0, I recommend you use the BackgroundWorker
component, which provides a concise multiple-threads programming model and
is very easy to use. You can start a BackgroundWorker in the Form's Load
event handler in your practice.

For more information on how to use the BackgroundWorker component, please
refer to the following MSDN document:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.componentmodel.backgroundwork
er.aspx

Hope this helps.
If you have anything unclear, please feel free to let me know.

Sincerely,
Linda Liu
Microsoft Online Community Support

Delighting our customers is our #1 priority. We welcome your comments and
suggestions about how we can improve the support we provide to you. Please
feel free to let my manager know what you think of the level of service
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