Yep, I was dead on. It's automatic binding that's giving me the problem.

According to MacDonald's book, Pro .NET Windows Forms, p. 273, when the form loads, it automatically uses a control with "complex binding" (a control with a DataSource) to control the position in boundtable.Rows[].

I don't want it to pick _any_ control to manage navigation, but it is doing.

I will probably have to dump binding because of this automatic behavior.