MsgBox not Modal?

tknnguyen · February 17th, 2009, 07:40 PM

Hi all,

I'm not sure if anyone has encountered this, but I have, and it baffled me. In the past, MsgBox() function should always display a modal message box, right?

Well, I'm using a timer in my VB 2008 code, and there is one part in the timer.Tick() event that's suposed to generate a message box. I always thought that the system would then pause and wait for users' reponse, but low and behold, the time starts up again, and it went back to the beginning of the timer.Tick() code section, thus generating mutiple instances of the message, and end up in an infinite loop.

I looked in VB Help and also searched online too, and came up with nothing. All descriptions about MsgBox() function say that it's supposed to be modal.

If you have seen this, and know how to get around this problem, I would really appreciate your help on this. The alternative to this, that I could think of is to create my own message box, and each time that it is shown, then make sure the form is displayed as system modal. I would like to avoid this if there is a better and more elegant solution to this problem.

Thank you very much for all your help.

gbianchi · February 17th, 2009, 09:13 PM

Hi there...

Well.. In vb5 (don't remember about 6) msgbox where bugged and you could just dispatch one from a user control, and continue working with the application like the msgbox never appeared.
More than a bug, I think this is a problem that comes to where the msgbox is modal from. Since you are just calling it from a different "thread" (in vb5, not a real one, but a control proccesing one), maybe the msgbox is modal to that thing and not your entire application.

A quickly way to solve it in your case, comes with two solution:

1) use a variable at form level, boolean, set it to false at the beginning of the form. In the timer event do something like this:

Code:

private sub timer_event(...) if variable = false thenvariable = true
do your thing...
variable = false
endif

2) just disable the timer when you enter and re enable after the messagebox.

Anyway, I think that message box are system calls, so maybe windows is buggy (HEY if somebody ask I never say that!)

gbianchi · February 17th, 2009, 10:05 PM

I just remember.. That happens at run time or design time?? the weird thing in vb5 happens only at design time. In run time, the msgbox just go modal like any other.

tknnguyen · February 18th, 2009, 11:55 AM

Hi,

Thanks for the comments. This happens at run time in VB 2008.

Unfortunately, I had to do what you had mentioned in Method #2, and it works ok. It is just annoying to have to do that everytime there is a timer involved though. But I guess that I have no choice, since it is buggy.

Thanks again for your help.