.NET: Limiting a Program to a Single Instance
Windows Mobile comes with an internal instance counter that will switch to an already existing window if a program is started more than just once.
Windows CE is lacking such a feature, but it is relatively painless to implement using P/Invoke and events.
public class SingleInstance : IDisposable { [DllImport( "Coredll.dll", SetLastError = true )] static extern IntPtr CreateEvent( IntPtr ptrAlwaysZero, bool bManualReset, bool bInitialState, string lpName ); [DllImport( "Coredll.dll", SetLastError = true )] static extern int CloseHandle( IntPtr handle ); private IntPtr Handle = IntPtr.Zero; public bool IsSingleInstance { get { return this.Handle != IntPtr.Zero; } } /// <summary>A running program is identified by an already existing event that is named the same as the executable path.</summary> public SingleInstance() : this( Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetModules()[ 0 ].FullyQualifiedName ) { } /// <summary>Accepts a single string as a parameter.</summary> public SingleInstance( string sEventName ) { this.Handle = CreateEvent( IntPtr.Zero, true, false, sEventName ); if ( Marshal.GetLastWin32Error() != 0 ) Dispose(); } public void Dispose() { if ( this.Handle != IntPtr.Zero ) CloseHandle( this.Handle ); this.Handle = IntPtr.Zero; } }
You should make use of this class as early in the program as possible, e.g.
static class Program { [MTAThread] static void Main() { using ( SingleInstance si = new SingleInstance() ) if ( si.IsSingleInstance ) Application.Run(); } }
Use of the above code is not restricted to Windows Mobile though. You could also use this snippet for regular Windows programs, just remember to replace the dllimport for Coredll.dll to kernel32.dll.