Despite excellent progress from the days of Windows 95, Windows Explorer is still prone to the random crashes here and there; may it be out of spite after years of user stupidity, hardware problems, rogue software installed, hacked system files which compromise stability or just a random act of cruelty from a supernatural force.
Fortunately, it's easy enough to detect when Explorer crashes. I guess Microsoft got used to problems within 3rd party software not doing stuff right and implemented an event for it.
In your header file, define a message called WM_TASKBARCREATED.
UINT WM_TASKBARCREATED = 0; In your InitInstance() call, after the handle is created:
// Set up a message to detect when Explorer has crashed
WM_TASKBARCREATED = RegisterWindowMessage(TEXT("TaskbarCreated")); This will register a message for the duration of your program. It will automatically be discarded when the program ends.
Finally, add a handler for the message in WndProc():
switch (message) {
case WM_COMMAND:
...
break;
case WM_DESTROY:
...
break;
default:
// If Explorer has crashed/restarted, re-initialise the program
if (message == WM_TASKBARCREATED) {
// Put your crash handler code here, or make a function and call it from here
}
break;
} The reason we put it into the default is that switch blocks need hardcoded values to work, but our WM_TASKBARCREATED message value is assigned everytime the program is run.
Note that tray icons for Windows features (such as network icons, sound, etc) have a brief delay of about 3-5 seconds before restoring themselves.
I would also advise to follow that practice and use a timer to handle the crash-restore code. Restoring something immediately before Explorer has fully initialised may cause it to freeze up, leaving your system in an unusable state.
