HWND from Spy++ Window Handle - winapi

Spy++ gives you the hex value of a window handle. I am want to take in this number value and create the HWND from that value but I can't seem to figure out how to do that.
This is what I have tried:
_tprintf(_T("What is the window handle?\r\n"));
HWND hWnd;
_tscanf(_T("%x"), &hWnd);
if(!IsWindow(hWnd))
{
_tprintf(_T("This is not a window\r\n"));
}
else
{
_tprintf(_T("This is a window\r\n"));
}
What am I doing wrong? Or am I misunderstand something?

From the documentation:
A thread should not use IsWindow for a window that it did not create
because the window could be destroyed after this function was called.
Further, because window handles are recycled the handle could even
point to a different window.

Related

Child windows does not receive WM_DESTROY?

I packaged the winapi CreateWindowEx into a simple class. Since every window sharing a same wndProc(hwnd,msg,wparam,lparam), I put every window created by CreateWindowEx into a map to distribute msg, like this:
wndProc(hwnd, msg, wparam, lparam){
if(map[hwnd]!=nil){
switch(msg){
map[hwnd].wndProc(...)
}
}
}
And each time a window or its parent window being destroyed, remove it from the map:
case WM_DESTROY: delete(map, hwnd)
But things like buttons do not receive WM_DESTROY. I printed all msg in WM_NOTIFY and WM_COMMAND but i got noting.
So how can I remove those child windows form the map at the right time? Or a way distribute the msg without creating a hwnd map?
They certainly do get that message. But their window procedure is inside Windows, not inside your program. So you never see it. Something you can read in the MSDN documentation, note how WM_DESTROY doesn't get any special treatment. Nor generate a notification that your parent window can see.
Short from automatically removing all the child windows when you see the parent window destroyed, subclassing controls is a pretty standard requirement for C++ class library wrappers. Best to not invent your own btw, this has been done many times already.
So how can I remove those child windows form the map at the right time?
You have to subclass every window you create, either with SetWindowLongPtr(GWL_WNDPROC) or SetWindowSubClass(), then you will receive all of the WM_DESTROY messages.
Or a way distribute the msg without creating a hwnd map?
Frameworks like ATL and VCL handle that by dynamically allocating a thunk for each window and putting the object pointer right in the thunk, then use the thunk as the window procedure. That way, whenever the thunk is called, it passes the message directly to its associated object.

Sending WM_HSCROLL to other program

Im trying to scroll other program (PowerPoint 2013) by sending WM_HSCROLL,
and it will work only if I offer the correct LPARAM (not NULL) to SendMessage.
The value of LPARAM is dynamic, it will change if you close and open a new program.
Now I can only get its value by hooking WM_HSCROLL and clicking scroll bar manually.
// This is my code:
LPARAM lParam = 0x0a616c38; // Found by hooking WM_HSCROLL
SendMessage(hTarget, WM_HSCROLL, SB_LINERIGHT, lParam);
So is it possible to get the correct LPARAM programatically?
Many thanks!
p.s. The scroll bar is not a real window in PowerPoint 2013.
p.s. It returns 1 if I use GetScrollInfo(hTarget, SB_CTL, &scrollinfo), but all values inside scrollinfo are zero.
p.s. Office Home and Student 2013 Official Site
Did you try to call GetLastError?
GetScrollInfo will probably not work across process boundaries, so I would say that's why you're not getting valid values back.
The lParam value of a WM_HSCROLL message is either NULL for the standard window scroll bar, or the handle of the scroll control. The handle of the scroll control will obviously change every time the program is run, so you need to find that out yourself before you can reliably simulate scroll input.
To do this, you can use the FindWindowEx function to search the parent window (hTarget in your example) for child windows of class "SCROLLBAR". As you will probably find more than one scrollbar child window you'll need some way to tell them apart - most probably, via the window's GWL_ID value as this will probably not change from run to run.

How to discover the method that is called by a Windows Context Menu item?

When you click the right mouse button on your clean desktop it opens a context menu.
Each item there is a call to a method.
To programmatically call those methods, first I need to know which one I want.
IIRC there is a tool that helps with that, but I can't remember its name.
You cannot call such a method in another process. You could try to inject the WM_COMMAND message that a context menu usually generates with SendMessage. Use Spy++ to find out what that message might be, if it exists.
Use Spy++ to find the handle and use SendMessage / PostMessage. It will be something similar to:
hwnd = FindWindow(...)
hmenu = GetMenu(hwnd)
hsubmenu = GetSubMenu(hmenu, 0)
menuid = GetMenuItem(hsubmenu, 1)
SendMessage(hwnd, WM_COMMAND, menuid, 0)

How can I stop window rendering and later resume?

I'd like to prevent my window from being updated until I finish receiving data from the server and render it. Can I hook on the WM_PAINT event, or better still call some Win32API method to prevent the window from being updated and unfreeze it later?
More info:
In the context of an MMC snapin written in C#, our application suffers from annoying flickering and double sorting behaviour:
We use MMC's listViews, but since we subscribe to the sort event.
MMC does it's own magic and sorts the page being displayed (and we can't override that), and when we receive a reply from our server we change the listView again.
each row change is done sequentially, there's no beginUpdate etc. (AFAIK).
Normally hooking into WM_PAINT is the way to go, but make sure you also ignore all WM_ERASEBKGND notifcations, otherwise you'll still get flicker, because Windows erases the Windows area for you. (Return non-zero to prevent Windows from doing that)
One other possibility is to use the LockWindowUpdate function, but it has some drawbacks:
Only one window can be locked
Upon unlock the whole desktop and all sub-windows (i.e. everything) is repainted, resulting in short flash of the whole desktop. (It's worse on XP than on Vista)
Some controls have BeginUpdate and EndUpdate APIs for this purpose.
If you do something (e.g. hook and ignore paint events) do disable painting, then a way to force a repaint later is to call the Invalidate method.
OK, after all searching and checking I've found that LockUpdateWindow is bad idea - see for example articles of Raimond Chen OldNewThing. But even to implement the idea of SetRedrawWindow wasn't so simple - because what I had was only received from IConsole2* pConsole->GetMainWindow() HWND handler of main window. By setting it to SetRedraw = FALSE it was disappeared in very strange manner. Though to make the procedure run only for the TreeView and not for the whole application (ours left panel) I ran
EnumChildWindows(hWnd, SetChildRedraw, FALSE); //stopping redraw
//... here you do your operations
EnumChildWindows(hWnd, SetChildRedraw, TRUE); //restarting redraw
where SetChildRedraw callback was defined in next way:
#define DECLARE_STRING(str) TCHAR str[MAX_PATH]; ZeroMemory(str, sizeof(str));
BOOL CALLBACK SetChildRedraw(HWND hwndChild, LPARAM lParam)
{
RECT rcChildRect; ZeroMemory(&rcChildRect, sizeof(rcChildRect));
DECLARE_STRING(sText)
GetClassName(hwndChild, sText, MAX_PATH);
if (wcsstr(sText, L"SysTreeView32") != NULL)
{
SetWindowRedraw(hwndChild, lParam);
if (lParam == TRUE)
{
GetWindowRect(hwndChild, &rcChildRect);
InvalidateRect(hwndChild, &rcChildRect, TRUE);
}
}
return TRUE;
}

How to get a window handle to a COM Single-Threaded Apartment (STA)?

CoInitialize(NULL) creates an STA by creating a hidden window. How to get an HWND handle for this window?
Function EnumThreadWindows does not work, in an example I tried:
...
CoInitialize(NULL);
EnumThreadWindows(GetCurrentThreadId(), EnumThreadWndProc, 0);
...
BOOL CALLBACK EnumThreadWndProc(HWND hwnd, LPARAM lParam)
{
m_hwnd = hwnd;
return FALSE;
}
Nothing ever enters the EnumThreadWndProc.
Any ideas?
This hidden window is Message-Only Window, It is not visible, has no z-order, cannot be enumerated, and does not receive broadcast messages. The window simply dispatches messages.
To find message-only windows, specify HWND_MESSAGE in the hwndParent parameter of the FindWindowEx function. In addition, FindWindowEx searches message-only windows as well as top-level windows if both the hwndParent and hwndChildAfter parameters are NULL.
Source:
MSDN
Btw, I would be VERY careful here - you really shouldn't be sending window messages to windows you don't own. Your code is highly likely to break in a future version of Windows.

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