Destroy process-less console windows left by Visual Studio debug sessions
- by jon hanson
A known bug with security update KB978037 can occur with Visual Studio 2003 (and 2008) where sometimes if you restart a debugging session on a console app then the console window doesn't get closed even though the owner process no longer exists. The problem is discussed further here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2402875/visual-studio-debug-console-sometimes-stays-open-and-is-impossible-to-close
These zombie windows then can not be closed via the Taskbar or via the TaskManager, and typically require a power off/on to get rid of them. Over the period of even a single day you can accumulate quite a few of them, which clog up your TaskBar and are generally annoying.
I thought I would knock up a simple C++ Win32 utility to attempt to call DestroyWindow() on these windows by passing the windows handle as a cmd-line argument and converting it to a HWND.
I'm converting the handle from a string by parsing it as a DWORD then casting the DWORD to a HWND. This appears to be working as if I call GetWindowInfo() on the handle it succeeds. However calling DestroyWindow() on the handle fails with error 5 (access denied), presumably because the caller process (i.e. my app) doesn't own the window in question.
Any ideas as to how I might get rid of the zombie windows, either via the above approach or any other alternative short of rebooting? I'm in a corporate environment so installing/uninstalling updates/service-packs etc isn't an option.
