There is an easy, but under-utilized, technique for loading many nodes in a TreeView control (or ListItems in a ListView control) that is faster than the standard technique. Consider this loop:

For i = 1 To 5000    TreeView1.Nodes.Add , , , "Node " & iNext

Instead of repeatedly query the TreeView1 object for its Nodes collection, you can store it in a temporary object variable:

Dim nods As MSComctlLib.NodesSet nods = TreeView1.Nodes    For i = 1 To 5000    nods.Add , , , "Node " & iNext

You don’t even need the temporary variable, if you use a With block:

With TreeView1.Nodes    For i = 1 To 5000        .Add , , , "Node " & i    NextEnd With

On my system, these optimized loops run about 40% faster than the standard code showed above. This faster speed can be explained as follows: by storing the Nodes collection in a temporary variable (or using the hidden temporary variable that VB builds behind the With block), you avoid to bind the Nodes object to its parent TreeView1 object inside the loop. Because this latter binding is based on the inefficient dispid-binding, this step trims a lot of unnecessary overhead inside the loop.

The same reasoning applies to other ActiveX controls: