Question

I’m trying to get all controls in a winform disabled at the Load event.

I have a form (MDI) which loads a Login Form. I want to disable the controls behind the Login Form to only let the user enter his username and password, and then if the user is valid re-enable the controls again.

Answer 1

Just show the login form as a modal dialog, i.e., frm.ShowDialog( ).

Or, if you really want to disable each control, use the Form’s Controls collection:

void ChangeEnabled( bool enabled )
{
    foreach ( Control c in this.Controls )
    {
        c.Enabled = enabled;    
    }
}

I suggest doing it this way instead of simply setting the Form’s Enabled propery because if you disable the form itself you also disable the tool bar buttons. If that is ok with you then just set the form to disabled:

this.Enabled = false;

However, if you are going to do this you may as well just show the login prompt as a modal dialog 🙂