Can you automate this process?

ANS) In Visual Studio yes, use Dynamic Properties for automatic .config creation, storage and retrieval.

My progress bar freezes up and dialog window shows blank, when an intensive background process takes over?

ANS) Yes, you should’ve multi-threaded your GUI, with taskbar and main form being one thread, and the background process being the other.

Why is it not a good idea to insert code into InitializeComponent method when working with Visual Studio?

ANS)The designer will likely throw it away; most of the code inside InitializeComponent is auto-generated.

      What’s the difference between WindowsDefaultLocation and WindowsDefaultBounds?                     ANS)WindowsDefaultLocation tells the form to start up at a location selected by OS, but with internally         specified size. WindowsDefaultBounds delegates both size and starting position choices to the OS.