What can cause Windows to unhook a low level (global) keyboard hook?

Question

We have some global keyboard hooks installed via SetWindowsHookEx with WH_KEYBOARD_LL that appear to randomly get unhooked by Windows.

We

Answer 1

Very late but thought i'd share something. Gathering from here there's a couple hints like putting the SetWindowsHookEx in a separate thread and that it's more a scheduling problem.

I also noticed that Application.DoEvents was using quite a bit of CPU, and found that PeekMessage uses less.

public static bool active = true;

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
public struct NativeMessage
{
    public IntPtr handle;
    public uint msg;
    public IntPtr wParam;
    public IntPtr lParam;
    public uint time;
    public System.Drawing.Point p;
}

[SuppressUnmanagedCodeSecurity]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
[DllImport("User32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
public static extern bool PeekMessage(out NativeMessage message,
    IntPtr handle, uint filterMin, uint filterMax, uint flags);
public const int PM_NOREMOVE = 0;
public const int PM_REMOVE = 0x0001;

protected void MouseHooker()
{
    NativeMessage msg;

    using (Process curProcess = Process.GetCurrentProcess())
    {
        using (ProcessModule curModule = curProcess.MainModule)
        {
            // Install the low level mouse hook that will put events into _mouseEvents
            _hookproc = MouseHookCallback;
            _hookId = User32.SetWindowsHookEx(WH.WH_MOUSE_LL, _hookproc, Kernel32.GetModuleHandle(curModule.ModuleName), 0);
        }
    }
        while (active)
        {
            while (PeekMessage(out msg, IntPtr.Zero,
                (uint)WM.WM_MOUSEFIRST, (uint)WM.WM_MOUSELAST, PM_NOREMOVE))
                ;
            Thread.Sleep(10);
        }

        User32.UnhookWindowsHookEx(_hookId);
        _hookId = IntPtr.Zero;            
}

public void HookMouse()
{
    active = true;
    if (_hookId == IntPtr.Zero)
    {
        _mouseHookThread = new Thread(MouseHooker);
        _mouseHookThread.IsBackground = true;
        _mouseHookThread.Priority = ThreadPriority.Highest;
        _mouseHookThread.Start();
    }
}

so just change the active bool to false in Deactivate event and call HookMouse in the Activated event.

HTH

EDIT: I noticed games were slowed down with this, so decided to unhook when app is not active using Activated and Deactivate events.