在form_load中Winforms数据库连接

I'm not posting any code here, because the question is more general. So I need to populate datagrid with values by calling table adapter's methods (2 tier app). Usually I do that in form load event. Since recently though, database server becomes unavailable which results in a hanging form. That's nasty. Could you share some common scenarios you use to avoid that? May be I should rather do that in Shown event? And yet better do it asynchronously, say with a backgroundworker? I'm not posting any code here, because the ques