Question

My fairly normal MFC-based Windows application works fine on Windows 7. But when I run it in Windows 8, no UI appears. At first I thought it somehow wasn’t launching properly, but eventually realized that if I bring up the Task Manager, it shows that my application is running but it’s listed under the “Background processes” section.

What heuristics is Windows 8 running on a process to decide it is a “background process”? Or is there something I can do–perhaps in the application manifest–to explicitly label my application as a foreground process?

I have tried running in Win7 and XP compatibility modes, to no avail. I have tried several Win8 machines, all give the same result.

For what it’s worth, this app is compiled with Visual Studio 2003 and I do not have the option of using a newer compiler.

I have googled things like “win8 background process” but all I’m getting are people who want to create a background process. Some of the answers suggest that a background process has to be registered using the application manifest, but I double-checked my manifest and it definitely has nothing in it about being a background process.

Here’s my manifest, in case you can see something off in it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0"> 
<assemblyIdentity 
    version="1.0.0.0" 
    processorArchitecture="X86" 
    name="MyProductName"
    type="win32" 
/> 
    <description>My Product Description</description> 
    <dependency> 
        <dependentAssembly> 
            <assemblyIdentity 
                type="win32" 
                name="Microsoft.Windows.Common-Controls" 
                version="6.0.0.0" 
                processorArchitecture="X86" 
                publicKeyToken="6595b64144ccf1df" 
                language="*" 
            /> 
        </dependentAssembly> 
    </dependency> 
    <asmv3:trustInfo xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
        <asmv3:security>
            <asmv3:requestedPrivileges>
                <asmv3:requestedExecutionLevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false" />
            </asmv3:requestedPrivileges>
        </asmv3:security>
    </asmv3:trustInfo>
</assembly>

I will be opening a support incident with Microsoft to get their help if I can’t find an answer here. If it gets to that point, I’ll certainly update this question with what I find.

Answer 1

This is pure speculation on my part, as I can’t find any documentation on this, but I suspect that something in MFC is failing, and the lack of a working UI is why Task Manager is classifying your app as a Background Process, since the user is not able to interact with it.