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EnableVisualStyles: Part of Evil Axis?

[Note:  A nice guy emailed to thank me for the following, which I posted to my .NET list in May but forgot to put on the blog, so I'm posting it now; hopefully it will be useful to someone else.]

If you're using v1.1 of the Framework and encounter an SEHException and
have no idea what's causing it, check to see if you called
Application.EnableVisualStyles().  Apparently that is the source for a
number of problems that appear as SEHExceptions.

My problem in particular was happening when I tried to show a form with
ShowDialog().  If I used Show() instead, no problems.  All of my other
forms had no problems with ShowDialog, yet this one would crash the app.
After a bit of Googling, it appears that this error can come up almost
anywhere, so keep this in mind as it's almost always the solution.
Interestingly, using a manifest file to get the same results does NOT
cause the app to crash.  Go figure.

Posted: Jul 16 2003, 10:59 AM by jeffreykey | with 15 comment(s)
Filed under:

Comments

Michelle said:

Well, my problem is that every 5 times I run my app, one of them my icons doens´t show up at all, ANY icon, in my treevie, toolbar and even property grid.
I dont want to use a manifest cause I would have to do it every time I compile it.
:S
# August 7, 2003 10:21 AM

Jeff Key said:

So that happens _every_ five times? Haven't heard of that one. Ouch. If you can find a way to add a manifest to the bits via the command line, you could create a post-build event to do it.
# August 7, 2003 10:31 AM

Michelle said:

hehe sorry, language problems here.
I was trying to say that this happens a lot, at least _one_ time every five times I run it.
I mean, its very frequent.

And I'm almost giving up EnableVisualStyles. *sigh*
# August 8, 2003 8:15 AM

Michelle said:

So I gave up using EnableVisualStyles, and I no longer need to add the manifest after every time I compile cause now I puted the correct name on the manifest. Duh.
:)
# August 12, 2003 8:00 AM

Brisemec said:

It seems that calling Application.DoEvents() after calling Application.EnableVisualStyles() fixes some problems.
# October 6, 2003 11:05 AM

Mark belles said:

YES! Application.EnableVisualStyles is the mother of SEHException(s)... I recently stumbled upon the call and quickly did away with my mananifest file, however I also became aware of this strange new feature of my application. It miraculously has decided that after months of coding, it will now kindly throw a SEHException after I use ShowDialog() to show any form over the form passed to Application.Run(). This happens 10/10 times for me. I'm calling EnableVisualStyles(); DoEvent(); in the first lines of my code, well before any controls or windows are created. I'm pretty sure that this is the source of my problems. I'm gonna run and comment that shit out and see what happens. I'll post back with the results, as I've been debugging this for like 6 hours, and have had no damn sleep this is fresh on my mind... grrrrr.
# October 30, 2003 9:38 AM

Mark Belles said:

Yup, commented that code out, and my app runs like the champ i new it was! I'm gonna do some further testing and pinpoint this, will post back with the results.
# October 30, 2003 9:42 AM

Richard Thompson said:

Thank you. Thank you.

Now I can let my head recover from that stone wall.
# December 29, 2003 1:09 PM

Calis LNb said:

3 days of my life, I have given to EnableVisualStyles and it's cursed progeny, the SEHException. Thank you, Thank you for putting this up on the web where I could see it.
My app ran perfectly for weeks on end after I first put it in place. Only after I reorganized my datasets and made some mods to some mousemove events did the error started coming up 95/100 times . . .
# January 20, 2004 5:11 PM

TrackBack said:

# April 5, 2004 5:48 AM

TrackBack said:

# April 5, 2004 6:19 AM

TrackBack said:

# April 29, 2004 4:07 AM

Donny said:

I got the same SEHException Problem when using ShowDialog() of a form. You have mentioned about "Interestingly, using a manifest file to get the same results does NOT cause the app to crash." Does it mean I can bypass the problem by using a manifest file? Do you have the latest info about the crash problem raised by EnabledVisualStyles?

# June 15, 2004 10:49 PM

John Askew said:

I fixed this problem in my application and learned something more specific about this bug.
You must call EnableVisualStyles & DoEvents BEFORE you instantiate your main form.

[STAThread]
static void Main()
{
// Enable XP Theme support(?)
Application.EnableVisualStyles();
Application.DoEvents();
ClientMainForm clientMainView =
new ClientMainForm();

// .... more code here ...

Application.Run(clientMainView);
}
# June 23, 2004 12:36 PM

Greg Osborne said:

Does anyone know how to enable visual styles on VS.NET 2003 addins?
# July 15, 2004 12:36 PM
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