What does Internet Explorer do to notify other browsers about proxy settings change?

Question

I've come to a strange behaviour, if I change proxy settings on Windows 7 in

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

Google Chrome acts like nothing happened - even after restarting it. However when I start/restart Internet Explorer, somehow it "tells" Chrome about the changes and suddenly Chrome starts to use the proxy settings - even without restarting Chrome.

What does Internet Explorer "do" so Chrome notices that?

Is something similar, something that IE Explorer do, achieveable in C++ ?

PS: RegNotifyChangeKeyValue does not seem to be the thing...

Answer 1

You must send broadcast message WM_SETTINGCHANGE

upd. Parameters must be set to null like this: SendNotifyMessage(HWND_BROADCAST,WM_SETTINGCHANGE,(WPARAM)(0),(LPARAM)(0));

Or you can use InternetSetOption fuction from WinInet library like this: InternetSetOption(NULL,INTERNET_OPTION_SETTINGS_CHANGED,NULL,0);