Making my console application invisible

I am developing a console application for my public library as a school project. The console application will run as soon as the user logs on and do some background work.

The thing is, I don't want the console application to actually appear. I need it invisible. The last thing I need is complaints because some people got freaked out that a CMD window opened and closed, besides that the library wants it as invisible as possible.

I tried following the code in this thread: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/csharpgeneral/thread/ea8b0fd5-a660-46f9-9dcb-d525cc22dcbd

but to no avail, I can still see the console application pop open and c开发者_开发知识库lose after it has done all of its work.

Is there a better way to stop the console from appearing? Thanks.

The best thing to do is just don't compile it as a console application! Compile it as a Windows EXE and no console will show. Then you can just do whatever you need to do in the Main method without showing a UI.

But in any case, if you must hide/show the console window I would steer clear of using FindWindow for this task since there is a much more reliable API for this: GetConsoleWindow. This will give you the HWND of the console window and you can try passing that to ShowWindow.

As Josh Einstein has suggested you can use ShowWindow Api to hide your window.

Here's a example:

using System.Runtime.InteropServices

class CommandLine
{

    [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    static extern bool ShowWindow(IntPtr hWnd, int nCmdShow);

    [DllImport("Kernel32")]
    private static extern IntPtr GetConsoleWindow();

    const int SW_HIDE=0;
    const int SW_SHOW=5;

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
         IntPtr hwnd;
         hwnd=GetConsoleWindow();
         ShowWindow(hwnd,SW_HIDE);

         //Your logic goes here
    }
}

I am not sure about this code as I have not tested it. Let me know if you face any problem.

Have you tried: Project Properties> Application > output Type: to "Windows Application"?

Its a little more complicated than a console application... but if you want something to truly be running in the background when someone logs in then you could create a Windows Service application.

But it does require a little additional work in setting up and installing the Windows Service but there is an abundance of example code on the web:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/9k985bc9(v=VS.80).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sd8zc8ha(v=VS.80).aspx

http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/uploadfile/mahesh/window_service11262005045007am/window_service.aspx

http://www.developer.com/net/net/article.php/2173801/Creating-a-Windows-Service-in-NET.htm

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/simplewindowsservice.aspx

Hello I was creating a Console application to be called by the task scheduler. I didn't want the console app to show up so I changed the project properties to have the output to Windows Application.

Change the output type to Windows application Go to : Project - >Project Properties And change the output type to Windows Application

I tried both methods 2) Searock and then 1) Josh --- with Searock's solution the console app window still appeared, although for a very brief moment --- however with Josh's solution the console did not appear nor did my program have any issues -- of course I did have to replace all the console.writeline calls with a call that logged the information out to a log file

Note: I would have just commented on Josh's solution but I cannot do that quite yet :)