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"Taskbar and Start Menu Properties Dialog" showing made easy

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19 Sep 2006CPOL 37.4K   11   2
This article shows you ways to run Control Panel applets from VC++, even those that don't have a cpl extension file.

Sample Image - taskbarProperties.jpg

Background

In one of the newsgroups, a guy asked about how to show the Taskbar and Start Menu properties dialog in VC++. I am going to show here the ways in which several different Control Panel applets can be run from VC++.

Running from Run box

Running an applet from the "Run" box is easy' just type "control desk.cpl" and press OK. It will show you the Desktop properties dialog box.

Running from VC++

Running an applet from your code is also easy:

C++
ShellExecute( this->m_hWnd, NULL, "desk.cpl", NULL, NULL, 0);

Then what is the problem

The problem with showing the "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" applet is this that you can't find a "cpl" file which shows this dialog.

Solution

For help, I searched MSDN which says "you can show this dialog with any scripting language". But what about VC++? Here is how to show this dialog the IDispatch way.

C++
CString ss = ("TrayProperties");
BSTR szMember = ss.AllocSysString();
DISPID dispid;
COleDispatchDriver disp;
disp.CreateDispatch("Shell.Application");
disp.m_lpDispatch->GetIDsOfNames(IID_NULL,&szMember,1,LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT,&dispid);
disp.InvokeHelper(dispid, DISPATCH_METHOD, NULL,NULL,NULL); 
SysFreeString( szMember);

Never forget to initialize and uninitialize COM.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
Pakistan Pakistan
tanvon malik ( real name Tanveer Ahmad )I am a CNC Programmer, cnc setter, cnc operator. want to know about me visit my websites.
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I been in Switzerland MAG former +FMS+ for CNC training.


Most interesting technologies I like COM MFC DirectShow such as filter development. I am from Pakistan.
Have worked on projects mostly related video capturing, video data processing and real time object tracking on videos. For these I have worked on projects which use "Open CV Library". Which is mostly used for capturing data and its processing.

Comments and Discussions

 
GeneralOr you can use this Pin
swarup22-Jun-07 10:14
swarup22-Jun-07 10:14 
GeneralDisabling start menu Pin
w_kokie13-Mar-07 23:49
w_kokie13-Mar-07 23:49 

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