Cannot find the main window handle of the just stareted Dialog APP - winapi

Question

Here is the scenario:
I have 2 apps. One of them is my main app, and the second is a dialog based app, which is started from the first one. I'm trying to capture the main handle of the dialog based app from my main app. The problem is that I cannot find it with EnumWindows. The problem disappears if I put sleep for a second, just before start enumerating windows.
This is the code:
...
BOOL res = ::CreateProcess( NULL, _T("MyApp.exe"), NULL, NULL, FALSE, NULL, NULL, NULL, &siStartInfo, &piProcInfo );
ASSERT(res);
dwErr = WaitForInputIdle(piProcInfo.hProcess, iTimeout);
ASSERT(dwErr == 0);
//Sleep(1000); //<-- uncomment this will fix the problem
DWORD dwProcessId = piProcInfo.dwProcessId;
EnumWindows(EnumWindowsProc, (LPARAM)&dwProcessId);
....
BOOL IsMainWindow(HWND handle)
{
return GetWindow(handle, GW_OWNER) == (HWND)0 && IsWindowVisible(handle);
}
BOOL CALLBACK EnumWindowsProc(HWND hwnd, LPARAM lParam)
{
DWORD* pParam = (DWORD*)lParam;
DWORD dwTargetProcessId = *pParam;
DWORD dwProcessId = 0;
::GetWindowThreadProcessId(hwnd, &dwProcessId);
if (dwProcessId == dwTargetProcessId )
{
TCHAR buffer[MAXTEXT];
::SendMessage(hwnd, WM_GETTEXT, (WPARAM)MAXTEXT,(LPARAM)buffer);
if( IsMainWindow(hwnd))
{
g_hDlg = hwnd;
return FALSE;
}
}
return TRUE;
}
There are exactly 2 windows which belongs to my process and tracing their text shows:
GDI+ Window
Default IME
I'm not quite sure what does this mean. These might be the default captions, assigned to the windows, before their initialization.... but I call EnumWindows after WaitForInputIdle ...
Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

CreateProcess returns, when the OS has created the process object including the object representing the primary thread. This does not imply, that the process has started execution.
If you need to query another process for information that is only available after that process has run to a certain point, you will need to install some sort of synchronization. An obvious option is a named event object (see CreateEvent), that is signaled, when the second process has finished its initialization, and the dialog is up and running. The first process would then simply WaitForSingleProcess, and only continue, once the event is signaled. (A more robust solution would call WaitForMultipleObjects on both the event and the process handle, to respond to unexpected process termination.)
Another option would be to have the second process send a user-defined message (WM_APP+x) to the first process, passing its HWND along.
WaitForInputIdle sounds like a viable solution. Except, it isn't. WaitForInputIdle was introduced to meet the requirements of DDE, and merely checks, if a thread in the target process can receive messages. And that really means any thread in that process. It is not strictly tied to a GUI being up and running.
Additional information on the topic can be found here:
WaitForInputIdle should really be called WaitForProcessStartupComplete
WaitForInputIdle waits for any thread, which might not be the thread you care about