My Multi-Threaded Hell

Ok, im thinking to myself, *wouldnt it be nice if i could implement a second thread within which to stuff all my rendering code* So i crack open msdn and a couple of tutorials and within an hour i have a rudimentry knowledge of threads and a base class from which to derive my rendering thread. However, it would appear that i have overlooked something in my haste as now when i run my program in a window i get a grey background (my clear colour is set to black) and i cant even render a triangle... even better when i start in fullscreen the window flickers really fast, which creates a cool looking transparency effect, but not really what i desired. So, my first thought on what was wrong was a possible collision as windows tried to access the device context for the window in one of the default message handlers, so as a quick test i paused my render thread before calling DefWndProc, and resumed it afterwards, however to my dismay this didnt solve the problem, and now im stumped. I realise i havent googled the problem, or whatever, but i wouldnt know what to google for, so if you can provide any help, or even a pointer in the right direction it would be much appreciated. Thanks