How to get hWnd of window opened by ShellExecuteEx.. hProcess?

Question

This \"simple\" issue seems to be fraught with side issues.
eg. Does the new process open multiple windows; Does it have a splash screen?
Is there a simple way?

Answer 1

First use WaitForInputIdle to pause your program until the application has started and is waiting for user input (the main window should have been created by then), then use EnumWindows and GetWindowThreadProcessId to determine which windows in the system belong to the created process.

For example:

struct ProcessWindowsInfo
{
    DWORD ProcessID;
    std::vector<HWND> Windows;

    ProcessWindowsInfo( DWORD const AProcessID )
        : ProcessID( AProcessID )
    {
    }
};

BOOL __stdcall EnumProcessWindowsProc( HWND hwnd, LPARAM lParam )
{
    ProcessWindowsInfo *Info = reinterpret_cast<ProcessWindowsInfo*>( lParam );
    DWORD WindowProcessID;

    GetWindowThreadProcessId( hwnd, &WindowProcessID );

    if( WindowProcessID == Info->ProcessID )
        Info->Windows.push_back( hwnd );

    return true;
}

....

if( ShellExecuteEx(&sei) )
{
    WaitForInputIdle( sei.hProcess, INFINITE );

    ProcessWindowsInfo Info( GetProcessId( sei.hProcess ) );

    EnumWindows( (WNDENUMPROC)EnumProcessWindowsProc,
        reinterpret_cast<LPARAM>( &Info ) );

    // Use Info.Windows.....
}