Some time ago, when I was creating Todo 3.0 (a handy to-do list program for Windows), I needed a way to prevent users from starting multiple instances of an application. The reason for doing so is that if a user made changes to his/her to-do list in one instance of the application, then switched to another instance of the same application and made changes, the changes would overwrite each other. I figured this behaviour would probably confuse the user, and that it would be a better idea of the user could only have one instance of the application open at any given time. I did a little bit of digging around and thought of a few ways this could be done:

1. Have the application open a file for reading/writing. If the application fails to open the file because it is already open, then an instance of the application must already be running.
2. Use a named mutex. When starting the application, check to see if a mutex exists with a particular name. If it does, that means the application is already running.

Naturally, I chose the second approach. It seemed a bit more elegant and foolproof. Now that I have been thinking about it, I am wondering, what other ways are there that this could have been done? Is creating a named mutex a safe approach to solving this problem? The reason I ask is that I wouldn't mind writing up a short "Sweet Snippet" type article for GameDev on the subject (how to prevent multiple instances of an application from starting in the .Net environment), but I do want to make sure that what I am doing is indeed appropriate. Anyone?

or, you could do this nasty trick i found somewhere ;)



ugly hack but should work...

Quote:Original post by Colin Jeanne
The named mutex is a pretty standard approach. I'm not sure what you mean by "safe", however. As with all single instance programs, someone could potentially write another program to deny the use of your program (see Raymond Chen's article). Is that what you mean?

Exactly. I hadn't thought of that, and it really helps to be aware of such issues.

Evil Steve: That does look like a decent solution. I suppose it really isn't too different than using a named mutex.

cobru: That does seem like a bit of an ugly hack.

SiCrane: You have a mind like a whip! I had forgotten about that. Rather than focussing on passing data between instances of an app, I'd rather just focus on preventing multiple instances of an app.