How to intercept Windows startup event in Swing

Question

I created a JFrame with a few labels. I need to display a JOptionPane with the message "welcome user" once. If the frame is re-opened before rebooting Windows, the JOptionPane should not appear, but if Windows is rebooted, the JOptionPane should appear again.

How am I able to detect whether the system has been rebooted, since the last time my application ran?

Answer 1

So, as @Kayaman mentioned, there isn't an isRebooted() method in Java... but you can make one.

Assuming you are working on Windows platforms (you would need to implement a separate version for other OSes), you could query the system event log . With all the stuff that gets put in there I reckon it would include an event for "logged in", so all you need to do is find a way to look up the last "logged in" time and see if it has changed since the last time you checked.

Accessing the event log is a windows specific trick, and so won't be in the native java api, however there is a question on how to access the event log from Java which you could use as a base.

Answer 2

Drop a BAT script in the Autostart folder of the user which creates a file in a specific location:

echo JUST_STARTED > C:\NAME_OF_YOUR_APP.TXT

In your app, check whether the file exists. If it does, delete it and display the message.