Why can't I start the Windows Update control panel with WinExec?
- by Bill
In Executing Control Panel Items, MSDN says this:
Windows Vista Canonical Names
In Windows Vista and later, the preferred method of launching a Control Panel item from a command line is to use the Control Panel item's canonical name.
According to the Microsoft website this should work:
The following example shows how an application can start the Control Panel item Windows Update with WinExec.
WinExec("%systemroot%\system32\control.exe /name Microsoft.WindowsUpdate", SW_NORMAL);
For Delphi 2010 I tried:
var
CaptionString: string;
Applet: string;
Result: integer;
ParamString: string;
CaptionString := ListviewApplets1.Items.Item[ ListviewApplets1.ItemIndex ].Caption;
if CaptionString = 'Folder Options' then
{ 6DFD7C5C-2451-11d3-A299-00C04F8EF6AF }
Applet := 'Microsoft.FolderOptions'
else if CaptionString = 'Fonts' then
{93412589-74D4-4E4E-AD0E-E0CB621440FD}
Applet := 'Microsoft.Fonts'
else if CaptionString = 'Windows Update' then
{ 93412589-74D4-4E4E-AD0E-E0CB621440FD }
Applet := 'Microsoft.WindowsUpdate'
else if CaptionString = 'Game Controllers' then
{ 259EF4B1-E6C9-4176-B574-481532C9BCE8 }
Applet := 'Microsoft.GameControllers'
else if CaptionString = 'Get Programs' then
{ 15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4 }
Applet := 'Microsoft.GetPrograms'
//...
ParamString := ( SystemFolder + '\control.exe /name ' ) + Applet;
WinExec( ParamString, SW_NORMAL); <= This does not execute and when I trapped the error it returned ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND.
I tried a ExecAndWait( ParamString ) method and it works perfectly with the same ParamString used with WinExec:
ParamString := ( SystemFolder + '\control.exe /name ' ) + Applet;
ExecAndWait( ParamString ); <= This executes and Runs perfectly
The ExecAndWait method I used calls Windows.CreateProcess:
if Windows.CreateProcess( nil, PChar( CommandLine ), nil, nil, False, 0, nil, nil, StartupInfo, ProcessInfo ) then
begin
try
Does WinExec require a different ParamString, or am I doing this wrong with WinExec? I did not post the full ExecAndWait method but I can if someone wants to see it.
