Develop a program that runs in the background in .NET?

Question

I have made a small program in C# that I want to run in the background and it should only appear when a certain key combination is pressed. How can I do this?

Answer 1

There are at least three ways to do this:

• Classic Windows Service application. "Creating a Basic Windows Service in C#" article from CodeProject will help you. In that case you use System.ServiceProcess namespace. BTW, in that case you should read "System.ServiceProcess Namespace" article from MSDN. Here is a short quote from it:

  The System.ServiceProcess namespace provides classes that allow you to implement, install, and control Windows service applications. Services are long-running executables that run without a user interface.

• Memory-Resident Program. But this is almost impossible to do with C#. Use C++ or better C for this purpose, if you want. If you want to search by yourself, just use keyword TSR.

• Last one is a dirty one. Just create a formless C# application and try to hide it from Task Manager.