How do I restart my C WinForm Application

Question

Developing a C   NET 2 0 WinForm Application   Need the application to close and restart itself   Application Restart      The above method has proven to be unreliable   What is a better way to restart the application

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Take for instance an application that   While application is not registered   upon start  the application should prompt the user to register the application and create a login account   Once registration is submitted and login credentials are created  the application should restart  check for registration and prompt the user to login with the inserted credentials  so the user can access to all the application features     Problem  By building and launching the application from Visual Studio  any of the 4 alternatives bellow will fail to accomplish the tasks required        Note s      Take into consideration that the lines bellow don t represent a code block     They are just a representation of possibilities     that can be used to restart the application       Application Restart    Application Exit    Environment Exit int errorCode   Process GetCurrentProcess   Kill     What happens is  After creating the Registration  Login and calling Application Restart    the application will  strangely  reopen the Registration Form and skip data in a Database  even though the resource is set to  quot Copy if Newer quot    Solution  Batch Building the application was  for me  a proof that any of the lines above were actually working as expected  Just not when building and running the application with Visual Studio  In first place I d try batch building the application  run it outside Visual Studio and check if Application Restart   actually works as expected  Also Check further Info regarding this thread subject  How do I restart my C  WinForm Application

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Here s my 2 cents   The sequence Start New Instance- Close Current Instance should work even for the applications that don t allow running multiple copies simultaneously as in this case the new instance may be passed a command-line argument which will indicate that there is a restart in progress so checking for other instances running will not be necessary  Waiting for the first instance to actually finish my be implemented too if it s absolutely imperative that no two intstances are running in parallel

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I had the same exact problem and I too had a requirement to prevent duplicate instances - I propose an alternative solution to the one HiredMind is proposing  which will work fine    What I am doing is starting the new process with the processId of the old process  the one that triggers the restart  as a cmd line argument      Shut down the current app instance  Application Exit        Restart the app passing   restart  processId   as cmd line args Process Start Application ExecutablePath    restart    Process GetCurrentProcess   Id     Then when the new app starts I first parse the cm line args and check if the restart flag is there with a processId  then wait for that process to Exit   if   isRestart       try               get old process and wait UP TO 5 secs then give up        Process oldProcess   Process GetProcessById  restartProcessId         oldProcess WaitForExit 5000           catch  Exception ex                 the process did not exist - probably already closed          TODO  -- gt  LOG          I am obviously not showing all the safety checks that I have in place etc    Even if not ideal - I find this a valid alternative so that you don t have to have in place a separate app just to handle restart

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I use the following and it does exactly what you are looking for   ApplicationDeployment ad   ApplicationDeployment CurrentDeployment  UpdateCheckInfo info   null  info   ad CheckForDetailedUpdate    if  info IsUpdateRequired        ad UpdateAsync       I like the update dialog     MessageBox Show  Application was upgraded and will now restart         Environment Exit 0

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You could also use Restarter      Restarter is an application that automatically monitor and restarts crashed or hung programs and applications  It was originally developed to monitor and restart game servers  but it will do the job for any console or form based program or application

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It s simple  you just need to call the Application Restart   method  this will invoke your application to be restarted  You must also exit from the local environment with an error code  Application Restart    Environment Exit int errorcode        You can create an enumeration of error codes so that you application will exit efficeintly  Another method is to just exit from the application and start the process using the executable path  Application Exit    System Diagnostics Process Start Application ExecutablePath

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You could enclose your code inside a function and when restart is needed you can just call the function

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I might be late to the party but here is my simple solution and it works like a charm with every application I have           try                         run the program again and close this one             Process Start Application StartupPath      blabla exe                   or you can use Application ExecutablePath                close this one             Process GetCurrentProcess   Kill                      catch

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How about create a bat file  run the batch file before closing  and then close the current instance     The batch file does this      wait in a loop to check whether the process has exited  start the process

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I figured an another solution out  perhaps anyone can use it  too    string batchContent     c    ECHO OFF  amp  timeout  t 6  gt  nul  amp  start          APPPATH      amp  exit     batchContent   batchContent Replace    APPPATH     Application ExecutablePath   Process Start  cmd   batchContent   Application Exit      Code is simplified so take care of Exceptions and stuff

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I wanted the new application start up after the old one shuts down   Using process WaitForExit   to wait for your own process to shutdown makes no sense  It will always time out   So  my approach is to use Application Exit   then wait  but allow events to be processed  for a period of time  Then start a new application with the same arguments as the old    static void restartApp         string commandLineArgs   getCommandLineArgs        string exePath   Application ExecutablePath      try           Application Exit            wait allowingEvents  1000          catch  ArgumentException ex             throw            Process Start  exePath  commandLineArgs       static string getCommandLineArgs         Queue lt string gt  args   new Queue lt string gt   Environment GetCommandLineArgs          args Dequeue       args 0  is always exe path filename     return string Join       args ToArray         static void wait allowingEvents  int durationMS         DateTime start   DateTime Now      do           Application DoEvents          while  start Subtract  DateTime Now   TotalMilliseconds  gt  durationMS

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A much simpler approach that worked for me is   Application Restart    Environment Exit 0     This preserves the command-line arguments and works despite event handlers that would normally prevent the application from closing   The Restart   call tries to exit  starts a new instance anyway and returns  The Exit   call then terminates the process without giving any event handlers a chance to run  There is a very brief period in which both processes are running  which is not a problem in my case  but maybe in other cases   The exit code 0 in Environment Exit 0   specifies a clean shutdown  You can also exit with 1 to specify an error occurred

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If you are in main app form try to  use  System Diagnostics Process Start  Application ExecutablePath      to start new instance of application this Close      to turn off current app

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I fear that restarting the entire application using Process is approaching your problem in the wrong way   An easier way is to modify the Program cs file to restart       static bool restart   true     A variable that is accessible from program     static int restartCount   0     Count the number of restarts     static int maxRestarts   3      Maximum restarts before quitting the program           lt summary gt          The main entry point for the application           lt  summary gt       STAThread      static void Main                 Application EnableVisualStyles            Application SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault false            while  restart  amp  amp  restartCount  lt  maxRestarts                       restart   false     if you like   the program can set it to true again            restartCount        mark another restart                                 if you want to limit the number of restarts                                this is useful if your program is crashing on                                 startup and cannot close normally as it will avoid                                a potential infinite loop             try                 Application Run new YourMainForm                             catch       Application has crashed               restart   true

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The problem of using Application Restart   is  that it starts a new process but the  old  one is still remaining  Therefor I decided to Kill the old process by using the following code snippet               if Condition               Application Restart                Process GetCurrentProcess   Kill                    And it works proper good  In my case MATLAB and a C  Application are sharing the same SQLite database  If MATLAB is using the database  the Form-App should restart   Countdown  again  until MATLAB reset its busy bit in the database   Just for side information

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Unfortunately you can t use Process Start   to start an instance of the currently running process    According to the Process Start   docs    If the process is already running  no additional process resource is started        This technique will work fine under the VS debugger  because VS does some kind of magic that causes Process Start to think the process is not already running   but will fail when not run under the debugger    Note that this may be OS-specific - I seem to remember that in some of my testing  it worked on either XP or Vista  but I may just be remembering running it under the debugger    This technique is exactly the one used by the last programmer on the project on which I m currently working  and I ve been trying to find a workaround for this for quite some time   So far  I ve only found one solution  and it just feels dirty and kludgy to me  start a 2nd application  that waits in the background for the first application to terminate  then re-launches the 1st application    I m sure it would work  but  yuck   Edit  Using a 2nd application works   All I did in the second app was       static void RestartApp int pid  string applicationName                    Wait for the process to terminate         Process process   null          try                       process   Process GetProcessById pid               process WaitForExit 1000                     catch  ArgumentException ex                           ArgumentException to indicate that the                 process doesn t exist    LAME                     Process Start applicationName                This is a very simplified example   The real code has lots of sanity checking  error handling  etc

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Start Exit Method     Get the parameters arguments passed to program if any string arguments   string Empty  string   args   Environment GetCommandLineArgs    for  int i   1  i  lt  args Length  i       args 0  is always exe path filename     arguments    args i             Restart current application  with same arguments parameters Application Exit    System Diagnostics Process Start Application ExecutablePath  arguments     This seems to work better than Application Restart      Not sure how this handles if your program protects against multiple instance  My guess is you would be better off launching a second  exe which pauses and then starts your main application for you

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You are forgetting the command-line options parameters that were passed in to your currently running instance   If you don t pass those in  you are not doing a real restart  Set the Process StartInfo with a clone of your process  parameters  then do a start   For example  if your process was started as myexe -f -nosplash myfile txt  your method would only execute myexe without all those flags and parameters

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I had a similar problem  but mine was related to unmanageable memory leak that I couldn t find on an app that has to run 24 7   With the customer I agreed that safe time to restart the app was 03 00AM if the memory consumption was over the defined value   I tried Application Restart  but since it seems to use some mechanism that starts new instance while it is already running  I went for another scheme   I used the trick that file system handles persist until process that created them dies   So  from The Application  i dropped the file to the disk  and didn t Dispose   the handle   I used the file to send  myself  executable and starting directory also  to add flexibility    Code    restartInProgress   true  string dropFilename   Path Combine Application StartupPath   restart dat    StreamWriter sw   new StreamWriter new FileStream dropFilename  FileMode Create  FileAccess ReadWrite  FileShare ReadWrite    sw WriteLine Application ExecutablePath   sw WriteLine Application StartupPath   sw Flush    Process Start new ProcessStartInfo       FileName   Path Combine Application StartupPath   VideoPhill Restarter exe        WorkingDirectory   Application StartupPath      Arguments   string Format     0      dropFilename      Close      Close   at the end would initiate app shutdown  and file handle I used for StreamWriter here would be held open until process really dies   Then     Restarter exe comes into action   It TRIES to read the file in exclusive mode  preventing it to gain access until main app wasn t dead  then starts main app  deletes the file and exists   I guess that it can t be simpler   static void Main string   args        string filename   args 0       DateTime start   DateTime Now      bool done   false      while   DateTime Now - start  TotalSeconds  lt  30  amp  amp   done                try                       StreamReader sr   new StreamReader new FileStream filename  FileMode Open  FileAccess ReadWrite  FileShare ReadWrite                string   runData   new string 2               runData 0    sr ReadLine                runData 1    sr ReadLine                Thread Sleep 1000               Process Start new ProcessStartInfo   FileName   runData 0   WorkingDirectory   runData 1                  sr Dispose                File Delete filename               done   true                    catch  Exception ex                        Console WriteLine ex Message                     Thread Sleep 1000

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for using As logout you need to terminate all app from Ram Cache  so close The Application first and then Rerun it    on clicking Logout Button  foreach Form frm in Application OpenForms Cast lt Form gt    ToList                          frm Close              System Diagnostics Process Start Application ExecutablePath

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public static void appReloader                   Start a new instance of the current program         Process Start Application ExecutablePath              close the current application process         Process GetCurrentProcess   Kill            Application ExecutablePath returns your aplication  exe file path Please follow the order of calls  You might want to place it in a try-catch clause

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Try this code   bool appNotRestarted   true    This code must also be in the function   if  appNotRestarted    true        appNotRestarted   false      Application Restart        Application ExitThread

[c#] How do I restart my C# WinForm Application?

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