How to wait for ShellExecute to run?

Question

I have manages to use ShellExecute in VC++ in order to launch a document. Now I wish to run a command-line tool that receives some arguments, and to run in the background (a

Answer 1

Using ShellExecuteEx sometimes doesn't work if COM is used, so the following remarks must be considered.

Because ShellExecuteEx can delegate execution to Shell extensions (data sources, context menu handlers, verb implementations) that are activated using Component Object Model (COM), COM should be initialized before ShellExecuteEx is called. Some Shell extensions require the COM single-threaded apartment (STA) type. In that case, COM should be initialized as shown here:

CoInitializeEx(NULL, COINIT_APARTMENTTHREADED | COINIT_DISABLE_OLE1DDE)

There are instances where ShellExecuteEx does not use one of these types of Shell extension and those instances would not require COM to be initialized at all. Nonetheless, it is good practice to always initalize COM before using this function.

More from MSDN here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/shellapi/nf-shellapi-shellexecuteexa