windowed applications on ms windows

Hello,

I have been having trouble with a bug that seems to only occur when running
from SLIME, as opposed to the REPL at a CMD prompt. Basically, when I try
to run a windowed application, it will hang when opening the window. I do
not have any idea why. For example, the following sequence will hang:

(ql:quickload "sdl2-examples")
(sdl2-examples:basic-test)

When trying to debug it further, I found an odd workaround, though. I
noticed CCL had some basic win32 samples. In trying to isolate the issue, I
ran the following:

(defun hack-fix-slime-window ()
  (load
"c:/Users/MickBeaver/private/software_packages/ccl/examples/mswin.lisp")
  (make-simple-ms-window))

That opens a basic win32 window. Afterward, my other windowed applications
will start working as expected. So strange! I do not have any issues
running from the CMD prompt REPL, though. According to CCL's mswin.lisp, I
do not believe I was the first person to encounter this:

<snip-start>
;;; At the moment, attempts to create a window when running under SLIME
;;; fail for unknown reasons.<snip-end>

Any ideas?

System info:
GNU Emacs 24.3.1
SLIME 2014-03-27
Microsoft Windows 7 x64 Professional and Microsoft Windows 8 x64
Tried both Clozure Common Lisp 1.9 64-bit and SBCL 1.1.17 64-bit

-Mick