Reputation: 8138

.Net Console Application that Doesn't Bring up a Console

I have a console application I'm using to run scheduled jobs through windows scheduler. All the communication to/from the application is in email, event logging, database logs. Is there any way I can suppress the console window from coming up?

Upvotes: 22

Answers (6)

Joel Coehoorn

Reputation: 415600

Sure. Build it as a winforms app and never show your form.

Just be careful, because then it's not really a console app anymore, and there are some environments where you won't be able to use it.

Upvotes: 45

Peter Meinl

Reputation: 2586

Simply configure the Scheduled Task as "Run whether user is logged on or not".

Upvotes: 2

Wyatt Barnett

Reputation: 15673

Schedule the task to run as a different user than your account and you won't get a window popping up . . .

Upvotes: 2

MPritchard

Reputation: 7171

Borrowed from MSDN (link text):

using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

...
      [DllImport("user32.dll")]
      public static extern IntPtr FindWindow(string lpClassName,string lpWindowName);

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

...

         //Sometimes System.Windows.Forms.Application.ExecutablePath works for the caption depending on the system you are running under.
         IntPtr hWnd = FindWindow(null, "Your console windows caption"); //put your console window caption here
         if(hWnd != IntPtr.Zero)
         {
            //Hide the window
            ShowWindow(hWnd, 0); // 0 = SW_HIDE
         }


         if(hWnd != IntPtr.Zero)
         {
            //Show window again
            ShowWindow(hWnd, 1); //1 = SW_SHOWNORMA
         }

Upvotes: 10