CF Service Packs impacting registry auto start functionality?

[Tristan Leonard]

This is a question I posed to Jon Box, someone some of you might
recognize. He then suggested I post my question on this group (which
he refers to as "The Newsgroup") which I had been previously unaware
of!

My problem, in a nutshell, is this: After installing CF SP2 to fix one
problem another problem has arisen that I cannot effeciently get
around.

To go slightly further, the new problem is about the registry loosing
the ability to auto-start my application upon soft reset in order to
keep the user from interacting with the operating system normally.

Now, to go beyond the nutshell, I am trying to develop a Kiosk Mode
system for mobile applications and part of its functionality was to
add a path to itself in the registry (specifically, the Init key
within HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) so that it would start automatically upon a
soft reset. Under Service Pack 1 of the Compact Framework, this method
worked wonderfully; the application would start itself even before the
Start Menu and the ‘desktop' (i.e. the Today Screen) was shown. But
there was a problem: the button control did not support KeyDown,
KeyPress or KeyUp events which another class of mine that handles key
configuration used to handle input from the device's hardware buttons.
Thankfully, this issue was solved in the Compact Framework's Service
Pack 2; now all controls carry the key events and buttons can receive
the focus and still process events from the hardware keys such as
Calendar or Tasks (when the messages have been intercepted using the
Game API).

But another problem cropped up afterward: now the entry into the
registry which specifies when my software loads during startup is
being completely ignored; our software fails to load at all. I have
tried this on the HP iPAQ running Windows Mobile 2003 and on an
Intermec i700 running Pocket PC 2002. I have hard reset both of them
and noticed that, upon deployment, the program will load but input
will cease to work once a button control has received focus but, at
this point, the program will load on startup. Then I will install the
SP2 patch for the Compact Framework and input will work after a button
control has received focus but the program will not load on soft
reset. I will then uninstall SP2 and redeploy (the original version of
the CF will load during deployment) and the original behavior returns.

I am a little curious as to why the Service Pack of the Compact
Framework would change the behavior of something which seems to be
operating system specific rather than software development specific. I
am able to confirm that my edit to the registry is made in both cases;
it appears that under SP2 the registry is simply being ignored. Has
anyone else had this problem? Are there any other solutions besides
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Init that could help me here? We are aware that we
may put the application or a shortcut to it inside the
\Windows\Startup folder but, for that to work, the shell must load
first and that reveals the start bar to the user (if only for a
moment) and that's a drawback we would prefer to avoid.

Any information would be helpful, and I'm glad to have found this
place. Thanks a lot.

Tristan Leonard

 

[Paul G. Tobey [eMVP]]

At a guess, what is probably going on is that something in the startup code
for SP2 is counting on an OS capability being up-and-running, but, at the
time when you are being launched, it's not yet there. As to what that
capability (or API), that might be, I have no idea. If it were me, I'd
adjust the list of dependencies in the Init keys to load your program as
late during startup as possible, in hopes that the API will be ready by
then. Are you absolutely sure that *none* of the parts of your program that
you wrote is being executed? If your main routine is being run, you could
P/Invoke the IsAPIReady() call to wait for the right thing to be running,
assuming we can figure out what that right thing is...

Paul T.

 

[Chris Tacke, eMVP]

If you follow that path, I'd not auto-lauch the CF app, but instead write a
C shim app that calls IsAPIReady then CreateProcess on the CF app.

-Chris

 

[Tristan Leonard]

I'd considered that path, Chris, after I realized that the LaunchXX
code put it a bit too early it would seem. It seems that in SP1, you
could run a framework application before the Shell but now I have to
load it afterwards. Once I put in a Launch that was greater than 50
and put a Depend on the shell32.exe, it loaded without question but
the start bar was still visible for that second. I think if I come up
with a little C++ loader app, I might be able to shave off that
second.

Thanks a lot,
Tristan