glut + threads

I'm trying to create a small splash screen with glut that displays while the application is loading textures/objects/etc and then destroy the splash window and create a new main window that contains all the 3d objects.

Obviously, I need to create a new thread to do the loading otherwise the splash window does nothing.

I'm trying to keep this as cross platform as possible, hence the use of glut. I've tried playing with the pthreads-win32 (which would let me use normal posix threads on *nix) but I was having a nightmare with static functions etc.

If anyone has any suggestions for an alternative, or perhaps experience with posix threads under w32, i'd be most grateful for any advice. All I want to do with the thread is run one function which loads everything.

Thank you for any help you can give!