Replacing system tray clock

[Vandra Akos]

Could anyone tell me how I could replace the system tray clock? I have seen a lot of applications do that, like ChameleonClock, and would like to do one myself. If somebody could give me some clues on doing that, I would really, really really appreciate it. Thanks

----- Vandra Akos

[Dave Kreskowiak]

I looked into doing that about a year ago. From what I remember, it required jumping through some very complicated hoops to get it done. I think you had to get the window handle of the system tray, then the handle of the clock window, take over the message pump of that window and intercept certain messages for painting. Your code essentially replaces the drawing code of the original clock... I think!

Dave Kreskowiak Microsoft MVP - Visual Basic

[Vandra Akos]

Nah, I don't really think it would be *THAT* complicated. I saw a I guy did something like this, but had a problem somewhere else, and said "I replaced the system clock, / that was simple /, but then got into some trouble..." So I think there should be a simpler solution to this.

----- Vandra Akos

[Dave Kreskowiak]

No, not really. There is no seperate Clock.exe or service putting that clock up. It's built into Explorer.exe, so I seriously doubt he "just replaced it". He more than likely wrote his own clock and put that up in the system tray.

Dave Kreskowiak Microsoft MVP - Visual Basic

[Luc Pattyn]

;) http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/safeicon.asp[^]

Luc Pattyn

[Vandra Akos]

So, do you have some code snippets, or anything to start with, because i couldn't really understand what you said before thoroughly... Anyhow sounds very nasty, and i wonder if it was possible for a process to draw into another process' area... If it was, that could be a huge security flaw in windows... I mean i could go on, and change any window's contents...

----- Vandra Akos

[Dave Kreskowiak]

Vandra Akos wrote:

So, do you have some code snippets, or anything to start with

Nope. Just a few hours of Googling taught me what needed to be done, including finding the correct window handle, processing of the messages, and code injection into another process.

Vandra Akos wrote:

i wonder if it was possible for a process to draw into another process' area

Yes it is. All you need in the handle to the window you want to draw in. Keeping it drawn the way you want and not having the application overdraw what you've done is the hard part.

Vandra Akos wrote:

If it was, that could be a huge security flaw in windows... I mean i could go on, and change any window's contents...

Not easily, but it could be done. It's not as big a problem as you might think, though. There are security restrictions on some of the Win32 functions that you have to call to pull this off. If your a normal User, then you can't make some of the calls required to do this. If your an Administrator though...

Dave Kreskowiak Microsoft MVP - Visual Basic

[axos88]

uh, huh? I don't want to create an icon, I actually want to replace the system clock part in the status bar, you know where it says 15:02, something more cool, and with a pop up-menu or something like that

[Luc Pattyn]

Well, you can remove the standard system clock, and create your own application, using one (or more) NotifyIcons, where each of these icons shows (part of) the date/time/whatever, and gets updated regularly. Main drawback of this approach is you have no control over the icon position (although icons created in sequence by a single application seem to stay together). The referenced article shows you how to safely update an icon that is in use.

Luc Pattyn