Description of RunOnceEx and RunEx Registry Keys

ID: Q232487

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows 98

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about editing the registry. Before you edit the registry, make sure you understand how to restore it if a problem occurs. For information about how to do this, view the "Restoring the Registry" Help topic in Regedit.exe or the "Restoring a Registry Key" Help topic in Regedt32.exe.

SUMMARY

This article describes the functionality of the RunOnceEx and RunEx registry keys

MORE INFORMATION

Currently, the "Run" and "RunOnce" registry keys in Windows 98 execute commands when the shell starts. Several features have been added to make this more robust.

The replacements are RunEx for Run and RunOnceEx for RunOnce. The main features for RunEx and RunOnceEx are described in the following list:

Status - A dialog box is displayed while the items contained in the registry key are being processed. The entries to be processed are grouped into sections and the dialog box highlights the current section being processed. You can disable the status dialog box feature.

Performance - The majority of the commands contained in the Run and RunOnce registry keys create separate processes, which is very inefficient. The RunEx and RunOnceEx registry keys do not create separate processes. The RunEx and RunOnceEx registry keys also support a dependency list of DLLs that remain loaded while either all the sections or some of the sections are being processed.

Error Handling - If an exception occurs while calling a function in a DLL, the exception is caught and an error dialog box is displayed to the user. You can suppress this error dialog box using a flag in the RunOnceEx registry key. You can also set a flag to enable log errors and execution of the RunOnceEx or RunEx registry keys.

Deterministic - The RunOnceEx and RunEx registry keys sort the entries and sections alphabetically to force a deterministic order. The RunOnce and Run registry keys do not wait until one entry is finished before starting the next entry, except for the items in the RunOnce registry key contained in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry key.

Additional query words:


Keywords          : kbsetup win98 
Version           : WINDOWS:
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbinfo

Last Reviewed: June 21, 1999