Question

I have a module that needs to run a small .Net command-line program to check for updates. Everything is working great, however I am having trouble suppressing the Command Prompt output from being shown.

The app has it’s own Windows Form that it pops up if it detected an update. Updating needs to run as a seperate app due to the fact that it requires a different execution context from the DLL it is launched from.

string path = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location) + "\\" + AUTO_UPDATE_EXENAME;

updater.StartInfo.FileName = path;
updater.StartInfo.Arguments = AUTO_UPDATE_PARAMETERS;
updater.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = false;
updater.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
updater.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
updater.StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = path;

updater.Start();

I have tried most all of the different working combinations of CreateNoWindow, UseShellExecute, and RedirectStandardOutput and each of them results in that annoying black box popping up. The app does write to stdout but I only use that for debugging and the user shouldn’t really see the text that it generates.

Supposedly CreateNoWindow and/or RedirectStandardOutput should prevent the box from popping up, but it does no matter how I set these variables.

Answer 1

Set the command-line application to a Winforms Application, but don’t open a form when it executes, like you usually would.