WinForms application hang due to SystemEvents.OnUserPreferenceChanged event

Question

I\'ve been dealing with a strange application hang in my clients installations. After trying several things i reached the conclusion that without a dump it won\'t work. So I

Answer 1

The freezing issue due to SystemEvents.OnUserPreferenceChanged is quite common bug and here is a Microsoft explanation and recommendation how to fix it.

Here is the function you can invoke any time (before or even after freeze) to find out which particular controls subscribed to SystemEvents was created on wrong threads and thus could freeze your app:

    private static void CheckSystemEventsHandlersForFreeze()
    {
        var handlers = typeof(SystemEvents).GetField("_handlers", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Static).GetValue(null);
        var handlersValues = handlers.GetType().GetProperty("Values").GetValue(handlers);
        foreach (var invokeInfos in (handlersValues as IEnumerable).OfType