winforms - C# Windows Form Killed By Task Manager...Is There a Way to Run Shutdown Function?

Question

I doubt this is even possible. So your app is running and user decides to End Process via Task Manager. Is there a method/action to save data during process.kill? I doubt there is but I had to ask.

Also, if a user shuts down/restarts PC (as in windows update/manual restart), what action would the app execute? Window_Unloaded? On this second question, I would like to find a way to ensure my app does not show up as a 'if you want to restart, kill this app' situation and want to save needed data.

Your two cents is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

It's not possible to do what you want unless you have two processes; one monitoring the other one's status and do some stuff upon its termination. The watchdog process might be a Windows Service Application without GUI.

Windows sends a quit message to every opened application when normal shutdown occurs. You can run some code (usually housekeeping stuff) upon receiving the message and exit the application. It shouldn't take long or Windows will automatically ask user if they want to kill the application.

Force shutdown kills all processes immediately (in no particular/predictable order). So you can't (easily) detect it.

I suggest you to save everything needed as soon as possible to prevent data loss when the application process gets killed.