What does [STAThread] do?

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The STAThreadAttribute is essentially a requirement for the Windows message pump to communicate with COM components. Although core Windows Forms does not use COM, many components of the OS such as system dialogs do use this technology.

MSDN explains the reason in slightly more detail:

STAThreadAttribute indicates that the
COM threading model for the
application is single-threaded
apartment. This attribute must be
present on the entry point of any
application that uses Windows Forms;
if it is omitted, the Windows
components might not work correctly.
If the attribute is not present, the
application uses the multithreaded
apartment model, which is not
supported for Windows Forms.

This blog post (Why is STAThread required?) also explains the requirement quite well. If you want a more in-depth view as to how the threading model works at the CLR level, see this MSDN Magazine article from June 2004 (Archived, Apr. 2009).

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