Does CancelSynchronousIo work with WNetAddConnection2? - windows

Question

I'm trying and failing to cancel a call to WNetAddConnection2 with CancelSynchronousIo.
The call to CancelSynchronousIo succeeds but nothing is actually cancelled.
I'm using a 32-bit console app running on Windows 7 x64.
Has anyone done this successfully? Am I doing something dumb? Here's a sample console app (which needs to be linked with mpr.lib):
DWORD WINAPI ConnectThread(LPVOID param)
{
NETRESOURCE nr;
memset(&nr, 0, sizeof(nr));
nr.dwType = RESOURCETYPE_ANY;
nr.lpRemoteName = L"\\\\8.8.8.8\\bog";
// result is ERROR_BAD_NETPATH (i.e. the call isn't cancelled)
DWORD result = WNetAddConnection2(&nr, L"pass", L"user", CONNECT_TEMPORARY);
return 0;
}
int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
// Create a new thread to run WNetAddConnection2
HANDLE hThread = CreateThread(0, 0, ConnectThread, 0, 0, 0);
if (!hThread)
return 1;
// Retry the cancel until it fails; keep track of how often
int count = 0;
BOOL ok;
do
{
// Sleep to give the thread a chance to start
Sleep(1000);
ok = CancelSynchronousIo(hThread);
++count;
}
while (ok);
// count will equal two here (i.e. one successful cancellation and
// one failed cancellation)
// err is ERROR_NOT_FOUND (i.e. nothing to cancel) which makes
// sense for the second call
DWORD err = GetLastError();
// Wait for the thread to finish; this takes ages (i.e. the
// WNetAddConnection2 call is not cancelled)
WaitForSingleObject(hThread, INFINITE);
return 0;
}

Answer 1

According to Larry Osterman (I hope he doesn't mind me quoting him): "The question was answered in the comments: wnetaddconnection2 isn’t a simple IOCTL call." So the answer (unfortunately) is no.

Answer 2

First, WNetAddConnection2 is system-wide, not per-process. This is important, as calling WNetAddConnection2 many times can wreck system stability - particularly with explorer.
I use WNetGetResourceInformation first to check if the connection already exists before even thinking of calling it - my process may have previously run and then shutdown. The connection may still exist. When my Windows service(s) needs to add such a connection I use a nasty little trick in order to prevent these totally non-abortable API's from stalling my own service shutdown.
The trick is to run these calls in a separate process: they are system-wide, after all. You can normally wait for the process to complete as if you called the functions yourself but you can terminate the process and give up waiting if you need to abort in order to shutdown.
Sadly, however, certain Windows resources, such as named pipe handles and handles to files open on remote computers, can take about 16 seconds to close following failure or shutdown of a remote machine. CancelSynchronousIo does not seem to even help with those but will likely add additional long delay.