gtrubach / MyCPLApplet

Example of creating control panel applets in Windows.

MyCPLApplet

Description

There is an example of creating control panel applets in Windows.

Requiremets

• Visual Studio 2015 IDE

How to get it

1. Download/Clone this repository.
2. Open solution file .sln.
3. Build the solution.

Remarks

This sample writes in registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. So you need to run this application with administator rights.

How to create your own CPL applet

1. Open Visual Studio 2015 IDE.

2. Start project wizard

    File->New->Project
   

3. Select Visual C++ MFC Dll

    Visual C++->MFC->MFC DLL
   

4. Press OK and Finish.

5. Add extern applet function that initialize and handling your applet. For example see function CplApplet here.

6. Define your applet function in definition file .def.

How to debug CPL applets in Visual Studio IDE

1. Open project properties.

2. In General tab change Target Extension to .cpl.

3. In Debugging tab add

    Command : <Path to Rundll32.exe>\Rundll32.exe
    Command Arguments : shell32.dll, Control_RunDLL "$(TargetPath)"
   

4. Press Ok.

Remarks

Here you can see examples of Command

    x86 configuration : C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Rundll32.exe
    x64 configuration : C:\Windows\System32\Rundll32.exe

Access violation when you call the CPropertySheet::DoModal method

This exception is thrown because the CommCtl32.dll tries to modify the resources for the pages.

To avoid it you should change the font of the pages so they are not MS Sans Serif. MFC checks the dialog template font for the page. If it is not MS Sans Serif, MFC makes a copy of the resource in read/write memory, and then modifies the font and passes this to the C mCtl32.dll. When the DLL writes to the template for the page, it is writing to read/write memory. Therfore, an exception is not thrown.

Also you can read full article about this on msdn.