If I have a simple application that has a ribbon bar (and hence the custom ribbon title bar), when the UI is locked when the application is processing something...if I click in the form a standard title bar appears with "Form1 (Not Responding)" which partially obscures the other ribbon one.
Granted the UI should be more responsive (and is in most cases), but sometimes on a slow network a certain method takes a bit too long.
Is there a workaround for this?
No. The same thing would happen with an Office 2007 application if it hangs. Any form with a custom caption and/or borders will display the system caption and borders when the application hangs. You could work around this by calling your method on a different thread. You could use the BackgroundWorker component to accomplish something like this as well as report progress on the method back to the user while still allowing the application to respond to user interaction.