Handling DataGridView Update When Bound DataSource Empty?

I have a DataGridView to which I've set a list of objects to the DataSource. (I'm in VS 2005 using VB.) I created the DataGridView by creating a Data Source of type AssetIdentifier and dragging that Data Source onto my form. I want to update the DataGridView when the selection in either a combo box or another DataGridView changes. (Below I'm considering a click in another DataGridView.)

The following works:
Public Class dlgShowAssets
' class member variable
Private assetIdList As List(Of AssetIdentifier)
' pertinent subs and functions
Private Sub RefreshAssetIdentifierDataGridView()
[Code] .....

In this case, I always knew that assetIdList would have at least one element. I'd update the list, and reset the data source of the DataGridView to that list, and all was well. When I applied this to another situation, for which I couldn't guarantee that the list would have at least one element, things would work fine as long as I had at least one element in the list, but if the list became empty, the DataGridView threw System.IndexOutOfRangeException a number of times.

The rows in the DataGridView would not go away if I went from a non-zero number of elements to zero. I tried a workaround, which was to remove all of the elements, add one "dummy" element, and then re-bind the list to the control and it still didn't work. Also, following all of those exceptions, I'd get other similar exceptions when I hovered over the cells in the DataGridView. Some of the members of AssetIdentifier were "Nothing" but I fixed that in the constructor, and the exceptions still occur.