>>>If I recall correctly, top level forms must has a title bar.

No, they don't have to have a title bar, but you will end up with an empty
bar showing in the taskbar.

FWIW, in VFP 6.0 you can specify a BMP file at startup with the -b
switch, which fires up immediately while the VFP runtime is loading.
I tend to use that, plus a dialog splash screen that displays version
info as my apps load.