Closing interop initiated application upon main app crash

That is too cool...  I suppose I need to make my word application object owned by the project rather than buried in a user control....  let me go wire that up and I will get back to you and let you know how it went.

I created s standalone class that instantiated the MS word and MS Project objects at program start.  I added the following code to the application events as follows:

        Private Sub MyApplication_UnhandledException(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As Microsoft.VisualBasic.ApplicationServices.UnhandledExceptionEventArgs) Handles Me.UnhandledException
            SetParent(hWndAdoptedWordApp, GetDesktopWindow)
            WordApp.Quit()
            WordApp = Nothing

            ProjectApp.Quit()
            ProjectApp = Nothing
        End Sub

However though this will work if there was an exception, If I or the user "terminated abnormally"  such as if I hit the stop button in the compiler, or the user hit taskmgr>End Process the code won't run.  Is there something like an AbnormalTermination Event on the application object?

Maybe run some kind of vb for apps code in each of the word and the project instances that checks to see if the main app is running every 10 seconds, and if not, then it kills the instance?

I hould also mention I did add the same code to the "shutdown" application event.  Under normal circumstances this works fine, however I'm looking for a way to clean things up in all cases.  (the 1% of the time an abnormal termination occurs either because of lack of good coding or because the user terminates using the taskmgr)

You can use the Shutdown event. Keep a global setting (for example, a Shared bololean variable in a class, defaulting to False) indicating when the user has exited normally (in that case, you know you've closed your COM objects the right way). In the Shutdown event, if that global setting is False, you know that you've got to close the COM objects.

Hope that helps.

wont the variable be destroyed if the application was sent a kill?  If not, where do I put the if bClosedNormally = false then wordapp.close code?

vs 2008 puts this comment at the top of the application event:


    ' The following events are availble for MyApplication:
    '
    ' Startup: Raised when the application starts, before the startup form is created.
    ' Shutdown: Raised after all application forms are closed.  This event is not raised if the application terminates abnormally.
    ' UnhandledException: Raised if the application encounters an unhandled exception.
    ' StartupNextInstance: Raised when launching a single-instance application and the application is already active.
    ' NetworkAvailabilityChanged: Raised when the network connection is connected or disconnected.


That seems to suggest that shutdown won't run if the app terminates abnormally.

Thanks for your help... we are 99% there with the current improvement, but I am still having to manually kill the two processes when I make another coding error and terminate the application with the "stop" button because the compiler won't let me make the particular change I want to make.