User Login validation and preloader in Adobe Air

I am trying to figure out ways to authenticate a user and load the application (while showing a preloader) in Adobe Air [desktop application, and not web based flex app].

This is what I have been able to achieve so far:- A window asks for login details, once validated I make the login window invisible and open an instance of the application's main window. There are 2 problems with this:-

I have to open a new window (2 windows in total). It would rather look better if I was able to simply show the login form in one state and the main application view in another state. I tried that too, but the problem is that besides the view component, flash does execute all the actionscript and keeps the other state ready. There is some application view centric actionscript which starts throwing null reference errors etc. On top of that, the whole things takes a while to show up as both views are created, though only 1 of them is shown
I'd like to show a preloader once the user is authenticated, until the main application view is loaded

In a nutshell, this is what I am trying to do:-

Load the login window as fast as possible and stop there (actionscript in other parts of the application should not run)
Post authentication, load the main view of the application. Show a preloader until the loading is done
Load the main view in the same window (rather than opening a new window and making the login one invisible)

Need help and direction as to how this could be executed.

Thanks!

UPDATE 1

Ok, so now I've managed to consolidate the functionality in a single window. however, the transition between states is not a smooth one. State 1 is the login screen. If the user enters the correct login credentials, State 2 of the view becomes active.

Now for State 2 to load (its a bunch of UI components and a grid with loads of data) it takes time. Until then, the application blanks out and then all of it is shown in a jerk. Can the transition be made much smoother? Just showing 'Loading...' would suffice. Because State 2 won't show up until all of it has been constructed and State 1 dies away as soon as I change the current state to State 2. Is there any way to monitor the progress and changing the state only when the next state has been loaded!

UPDATE 2

Ok, I got the transition animation to work between states. However, there still exists a problem with the transition switch. The problem is that the state I switch to after login has been verified has a lot of components and shows a lot of data. Is there a way I can attach Listeners (if any), which I can fire when the state loading is complete and view has been generated! The current jerk like effect in the transition is because the state has changed but the view has not completed yet.

State Change to State 2 is not smooth as State 2 loads about 10000 rows of data from database. Is there a way I can change the state visibly for the user, after state 2 has been completely drawn out and has pulled in all data? creationComplete doesn't help much here.

In short, is there a way to start loading a state from an initial state and make it visible only when its complete loaded? i.e. can I fire an event from state 1 to load state 2, but to visibly transition to state 2 only when state 2 is completely loaded..

UPDATE 3

After a week of firefighting, posting a bounty and scavenging through the web I have still not been able to fix this! My application window becomes unresponsive for the time the UI is created and data is loaded. In Windows, it even shows 'Not Responding' at the window title bar for about 5 seconds. So its the UI getting stuck because the data is taking some time to be fetched and loaded - all of this happens in a single thread by default.

How do people who develop based on Adobe Air do this? I've mostly always seen a loading screen before the actual game is loaded - and when its loaded, its fully functional. There has to be a way!

The time consuming problem of loading 10000 rows in a grid can come in any web based language in any web application because web application needs to run in the environment of a web browser which has its own resource limitation.

So what I would suggest is that you don't load all 10000 records at loading the view. Instead load 1000 records first and then keep a link or button with label "Next" or "Show More" like and on that click bring the next bunch of 1000 records from the database. This way you can accomplish your task.

Thanks,

Jigar Oza