Timers work regardless of the number of threads in your application.
'Create the delegate that invokes methods for the timer.
Dim timerDelegate As New TimerCallback(AddressOf CheckStatus)
'Create a timer that waits one second, then invokes every second.
Dim timer As New Timer(timerDelegate, s, 1000, 1000)
To terminate a thread you call:
myThread.Abort()