>How does one create a nice looking splash screen to display during the span of
>time between the user clicking on the program's icon and the program actually
>being up and ready to run on the user's computer? Thanks in advance, CH.

You can create a form, and set the controlbox, closeable, minbutton and maxbutton properties to false. Place whatever pictures or what have you on the form. I like to put a timer on the form that checks some flag to see if the application is about to run it's main menu or form. When the flag is tripped the timer closes the splash screen. This can be handy if your app has some work to do before it displays a screen or menu. Users get antsy if nothing happens for more then 2-4 seconds, so the splash screen shows them your app is loading.