C＃从另一个程序启动程序

Question

I have this method

private void StartSDCBackupSet() {
    using (Process p = new Process()) {
        p.StartInfo.FileName = "SDCBackup";
        try { 
            p.Start(); 
            BackIcon.ShowBalloonTip(5000, "Backup", "Editor for settings startet", ToolTipIcon.Info); 
        } catch (Exception) { 
            MessageBox.Show("Program til settings blev ikke fundet"); 
        }
    }
}

According to the documentation I can find - and quite a lot of answers here -, it should start another program - SDCBackup.exe.

It doesn't. And I HAVE tried adding the .exe to the filename, but it does not make a difference. I get the messagebox with the message... I have checked p and StartInfo and everything looks right. StartInfo.UseShellExecute is true.

Debugging reveals, that it is the line p.Start(); that produces the exception. And the Exception is a System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception with message:

File not found

Documentation says, that the code above does the excat same thing as Run in Windows menu, but it obviously does not.

If I write SDCBackup in the RUN section of Windows menu, SDCBackup.exe is started as it should. (And SDCBackup.exe is a ClickOnce installation, that nobody really knows where to find - other than Windows itself...)

So why does my code not do the trick?

Answer 1

Use

p.StartInfo.FileName = "SDCBackup.exe";

Windows tests out known file types, and if it's an .exe (or any other known type, such as .bat, msc, scr, etc.) it runs it. As far as I know .NET does not do that.

You could try using Path.GetFullPath ( https://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/system.io.path.getfullpath(v=vs.110).aspx ) but I think it should work with relative paths as well.

Also make sure the file is inside your debug/release folder (whatever folder your .exe that is starting SDCBackup is in), since Windows looks in known directories that are contained in the PATH variable (such as C:\\windows\\System32 , etc), and .NET does not. If it is not in that folder, provide a fully qualified path and it should work.

Answer 2

It seems no one knows how to reference a ClickOnce installed application in another application. (Asked the question at Microsoft, and got no useful response there either.)

It seems ClickOnce apps are installed somewhere in the current users area, eg:

C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0 

and from there 3 randomly named folders down - and not the same folder names for different users; so there seem to be no way to solve this.

But I did get a way to create a regular installer from Microsoft, for Visual Studio C# solutions.

I used it to set the install path of my apps, so they can find it each other - and it functions.

• Install projecttype Installer
• and follow the explanation

It involves adding a Installer project to the solution.

I found, that in addition to the explanation,

• you have to go to Options for the installer-project,
• select **"Configuration Manager",
• and set it to be included when building

I also found, that version control is not automatic. You must manually set version number - and for the sake of simplicity, this is a different format than the one Visual Studio uses. If you do set the version, it will automatically uninstall previous versions of the same app.