i am trying to write a program that close explorer then runs another program.
i am getting a problem when trying to close explorer using the following code:
foreach (Process p in Process.GetProcesses())
if (p.MainModule.ModuleName.Contains("explorer"))
p.Kill();
can somebody please let me know why it is doing this and provide a solution
CHEERS
p.s. this is not a malicous program, it is going to run a game that doesn't work properly when explorer is in the background
The problem is that you can have multiple versions of Explorer running at any one point in time... and you usually need at least one of them. The shell that hosts the Start Menu is actually an instance of Explorer. So if you close all instances of Explorer, you'll also be shutting down the main shell, which is not what you want to do.
However, the fastest way to do get all instances of Explorer and kill them is:
foreach (Process p in Process.GetProcessesByName("explorer"))
{
p.Kill();
}
There is a simple undocumented way to exit explorer cleanly, see also question Gracefully Exit Explorer (Programmatically). It is intended for developers working on shell extensions.
The procedure is different for Windows XP and Windows 7:
Windows XP:
Open the shutdown dialog (Start > Shutdown), then cancel the dialog pressing CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-ESC (or hold down CTRL-SHIFT-ALT and press the Button with the mouse).
Windows 7:
Open the Start menu and then hold CTRL-SHIFT while right-klicking into the empty area of the start menu, see screenshot. A context menu appears, where the second entry is 'Exit Explorer' (without CTRL-SHIFT the context menu has only one entry)
p.s. this is not a malicous program, it is going to run a game that doesn't work properly when explorer is in the background
Explorer is a critical Windows component. You should debug why you have problems when Explorer is running, and fix those.
Killing Explorer will cause severe problems for your users.
Related
I have a program that is opening an explorer window to a certain folder but i want to perform an action right after the explorer window is closed, but if I use the following code:
Process proc = Process.Start("explorer.exe", "D:\\");
proc.WaitForExit();
It is opening the explorer window as desired but the WaitForExit command has no effect and it just goes right past it.
Is there a different way of opening the explorer window that will be able to let me know when it is closed by the user?
The problem is explained pretty well at The Old New Thing:
The reason that WaitForSingleObject returns immediately is that Explorer is a single-instance program (well, limited-instance). When you open an Explorer window, the request is handed off to a running copy of Explorer, and the copy of Explorer you launched exits. That's why your WaitForSingleObject returns immediately.
He offers a couple solutions you could probably use (with some heavy use of PInvoke), like using something like this.
In the end it might just be easier for you to use some other type of file browser maybe from a C# library somewhere that you have more control over, rather than explorer.
Cannot regenerate the error. Just tried this:
Process.Start("explorer.exe", "D:\\").WaitForExit();
and it blocks the current thread and waits until I close the explorer windows. Make sure that you're not executing the command on another thread than the one you want to block. Also make sure that you set every instance of a window to start a new instance of explorer.exe via importing below .reg file:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"DesktopProcess"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"DesktopProcess"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BrowseNewProcess]
"BrowseNewProcess"="Yes"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BrowseNewProcess]
"BrowseNewProcess"="Yes"
You'll need to restart your computer for this to take effect.
I am building a .net 4.5 (c#) app and packaging it with Squirrel for Windows.
As expected, the releasify command creates one Setup.exe file and one Setup.msi. The Setup.exe installs the app as expected on the two windows 10 computers I had access to.
On the windows 7 I used to build the app though, when I try to open Setup.exe, the window where I double clicked the icone goes in "please wait mode" (with the blue progress circle instead of the usual mouse pointer) forever. If I check the processes open at that point, I see three Setup.exe that I cannot kill with the kill process button or via Taskkill command. And all I can do at that point to kill them is pretty much rebooting.
As to the Setup.msi, it seems to do nothing I can see (tells me something like "checking requirements", and once it has, it just closes with no visible effect).
Any idea about what's going on or how I could find out?
Apparently years later this keeps hitting people so I'm posting the answer I had first put in the comments:
Deactivating my antivirus solved the issue >< I wish Avast had told me "hey I'm blocking this" and saved me a few hours
I need to restart Windows Explorer from my custom installer, but the catch is that I can't simply "kill its process" I need it to close "gracefully" so that it saves its settings.
While doing a search I found out that Windows has this option covered. If you open up the Start menu, then Ctrl+Shift+Right-click on an empty space of the start menu, you'll see a context menu that gives you the "Exit Explorer" command that does exactly what I need.
So I was wondering, is there an API to do that from a program?
The question of how to mimic the behaviour of "Exit Explorer" has been asked already.
But this is not what the installer should do, instead the installer should use Restart Manager Functions.
You can use it for various things depending on your needs:
Log out the user and log in again.
Close Explorer.exe and start it again.
Close services and start them again.
I'm developing a program in c# im stuck with this issue.
I want to show dialog box which refers to a particular directory.
I know that there is OpenDialogFolder and SaveDialog, but I don't want to save or open any files what I want is just to open a specific directory dialog box.
Like this screenshot:
It looks like you just want to open a copy of Windows Explorer. You can do that by simply calling Process.Start() and specifying just a folder path with no filename:
Process.Start(#"C:\Temp\");
The default behavior of the Windows shell, given a command like this on the command line (or a shortcut or a Run command) is to open Windows Explorer to show the contents of the specified path.
Now, Windows Explorer is an external process, which you are launching and then letting it do its thing. It therefore won't behave exactly like a modal dialog box, like preventing the dialog losing focus to another window. However, you can mimic the "can't do anything else with the application" behavior of a dialog by assigning the result of Process.Start (a Process) to a variable, then calling the WaitForExit() method on that Process with no parameters. This will block the application's main thread until the user closes the Explorer window you opened. It's not perfect; by blocking the thread, the application will not respond to any requests to draw itself or do any other basic things that even a dialog-interrupted window will still do, and you can still technically "activate" the window you used to launch Windows Explorer which will bring it in front of Windows Explorer. The Explorer window can also be minimized (something dialogs don't normally allow) and there isn't much you can do to prevent that.
I have a program that is opening an explorer window to a certain folder but i want to perform an action right after the explorer window is closed, but if I use the following code:
Process proc = Process.Start("explorer.exe", "D:\\");
proc.WaitForExit();
It is opening the explorer window as desired but the WaitForExit command has no effect and it just goes right past it.
Is there a different way of opening the explorer window that will be able to let me know when it is closed by the user?
The problem is explained pretty well at The Old New Thing:
The reason that WaitForSingleObject returns immediately is that Explorer is a single-instance program (well, limited-instance). When you open an Explorer window, the request is handed off to a running copy of Explorer, and the copy of Explorer you launched exits. That's why your WaitForSingleObject returns immediately.
He offers a couple solutions you could probably use (with some heavy use of PInvoke), like using something like this.
In the end it might just be easier for you to use some other type of file browser maybe from a C# library somewhere that you have more control over, rather than explorer.
Cannot regenerate the error. Just tried this:
Process.Start("explorer.exe", "D:\\").WaitForExit();
and it blocks the current thread and waits until I close the explorer windows. Make sure that you're not executing the command on another thread than the one you want to block. Also make sure that you set every instance of a window to start a new instance of explorer.exe via importing below .reg file:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"DesktopProcess"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
"DesktopProcess"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BrowseNewProcess]
"BrowseNewProcess"="Yes"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BrowseNewProcess]
"BrowseNewProcess"="Yes"
You'll need to restart your computer for this to take effect.