Question

I have a small program that’s only running in the background (doesn’t have any windows). It monitors key presses and when certain requirements are met, it opens specific program. The problem is that the program’s window doesn’t open in foreground – it opens behind currently active windows. How can I force it to open in the foreground?

I’m using Visual Basic .NET (.NET framework 4.5), this is my current code:

Dim temp As New Process
temp = Process.Start("C:\cygwin\bin\mintty.exe", "-")
temp.WaitForInputIdle(10000)

Answer 1

Try this (Its in C#): Taken from this site.

internal class Program
{
    [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
    [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
    private static extern bool SetWindowPos(IntPtr hWnd,
        int hWndInsertAfter, int x, int y, int cx, int cy, int uFlags);

    private const int HWND_TOPMOST = -1;
    private const int SWP_NOMOVE = 0x0002;
    private const int SWP_NOSIZE = 0x0001;

    public static void Main()
    {
        Process process = Process.Start(@"notepad.exe", "");

        if (null != process)
        {
            SetWindowPos(process.MainWindowHandle, HWND_TOPMOST, 0, 0, 0, 0, SWP_NOMOVE | SWP_NOSIZE);
        }
    }
}