Hiding the process window, why isn't it working?

Question

I have tried several things now to hide the window of a new process (in this case it's just notepad.exe for testing), but it just won't work regardless of what I try.

I have read many posts now all saying the same so why isn't it working for me?

I have a console app that is supposed to launch other processes without showing their windows.

I have tried to make my console app launch notepad.exe without a window, but it just won't work.

ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo("path to notepad.exe");

info.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
info.RedirectStandardError = true;                                
info.CreateNoWindow = true;
info.UseShellExecute = false;                                

Process proc = Process.Start(info);

I have also tried using various setting for info.WindowStyle and I have tried to configure my console app to be a Windows application, but it doesn't really matter what I do, the child process always opens a window.

Is this not allowed from a console app or what is the problem here - can anyone shed some light on this maybe?

I'm using .NET 4.0 on Windows 7 x64

Answer 1

In my experience, the following works whenever I fire up "cmd.exe".

info.CreateNoWindow = true;
info.UseShellExecute = false;                                

It doesn't seem to work with "notepad.exe". It fails with other apps too, like "excel.exe" and "winword.exe".

This works, however:

ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo("notepad.exe");

info.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;

Process proc = Process.Start(info);

From MSDN:

A window can be either visible or hidden. The system displays a hidden window by not drawing it. If a window is hidden, it is effectively disabled. A hidden window can process messages from the system or from other windows, but it cannot process input from the user or display output. Frequently, an application may keep a new window hidden while it customizes the window's appearance, and then make the window style Normal. To use ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden, the ProcessStartInfo.UseShellExecute property must be false.

When I tested it, I didn't have to set UseShellExecute = false.