In some app like WinSpy/Spy++ to make adjustments to list controls. It can correctly set an app’s list control’s modes, alignments,
sorting, styles, and extended styles. It can also get the widths of the columns and count of items.

The problem is that you cannot seem to get the columns’ names or the item text. The app uses code like this, where lc is a pointer to the target app’s list control:

  lc->GetColumnWidth();
  lc->GetItemCount();
  lc->ModifyStyle();
  lc->SetExtendedStyle();
  lc->GetHeaderCtrl()->GetItemCount();

That all works fine, but when you try something like this, it doesn’t work:

  TCHAR colname[256]=_T("");
  LVCOLUMN lvcol;
  ZeroMemory(&lvcol, sizeof(lvcol));
  lvcol.mask=LVCF_TEXT;
  lvcol.cchTextMax=sizeof(colname)-1;
  lvcol.pszText=colname;
  lc->GetColumn(col, &lvcol);

GetColumn may return TRUE or FALSE, but the LVCOLUMN structure remains unchanged. If you tried using that same code in a test app to get the name of a column from that app’s own list control and it worked. It only seems to fail when use it from a different app.

Solution:

Well, there is no surprise here; in fact, if there is any surprise, it is that you did not manage to totally crash the target app (I presume that lc is a CListCtrl::FromHandle of an HWND in another process).

Think about this case:

you are passing the address of a data structure in YOUR process as a LPARAM-sized value to some totally different process, where that LPARAM value is completely and utterly meaningless.

David Ching did a remote-sendmessage DLL some time ago.  This essentially does DLL injection of the code so it is running in the target process; you can google for this by looking for SendMessageRemote.

http://www.dcsoft.com/private/sendmessageremote.cpp

How to use a derived CTreeCtrl in a CTreeView?

It is similar with this article: “How to use an derived CListCtrl in CListView” or “How do I subclass the CListCtrl part of a CListView Class?“.

Just like CListView, there is no CTreeCtrl to subclass in CTreeView. The CTreeView is the subclass of the WC_TREEVIEW common control. If you need some extra feature in the CTreeView, the best way is like the method mentioned in the previous two articles:

Forget CTreeView and derive your own view CMyView from CView, and bond your CMyTreeCtrl in the view. Now you got the full control of the tree.

These two articles may be helpful to you: 

• http://www.codeguru.com/doc_view/custom_view.shtml
• http://www.codeguru.com/doc_view/Control2View.shtml

There are 3 solutions:

Solution 1: Send the message to the main window.

Send/Post the message to the main frame or the view, and then call some functions of the document.

But if in a MDI app, it does not work, because the routing becomes too complex. Typically, you can send message to a view, but that has risks if there are multiple views on the same document and the one you post message to has been closed.

Solution 2: Use WM_COMMAND message.

A document can’t recerive a message, but it can recerives the commands through MFC’s command mechanism. Then you can use ::PostMessage to post WM_COMMAND message, and repose it in the document.

Solution 3:

Create an invisible top-level window in the CDocument, that represents its message sink. You send/post message to it. Thus will eliminate the complex route policy between the main frame and the views and you don’t worry about the view closing.

First, when you add items, you need to call SetItemData to attach an data structure(an integer or a pointer) to the item.

Then, define a callback sort function.

int CALLBACK SortFunc(LPARAM lParam1, LPARAM lParam2, LPARAM lParamSort);

And here, the prarameters lParam1 and lParam2 are the data structure you set in SetItemData. With the parameters, you can get the item content and calculate the sort order. Please notice, the parameters are NOT the item index.

Last, you can reponse the message HDN_ITEMCLICK or LVN_COLUMNCLICK, and call CListCtrl::SortItems with the callback function.

The examples from the CListCtrl::SortItems in MSDN is obsolescent, you’d better refer to the KB article:

250614 HOWTO: Sort Items in a CListCtrl in Report View

In the DrawItem function the TextOut position is pretty half-hearted, and looks a bit better (to my eyes) if you do it something like this instead.

void CMyTabCtrl::DrawItem(LPDRAWITEMSTRUCT lpDIS)
{
CDC* pDC = CDC::FromHandle(lpDIS->hDC);
CRect rc(lpDIS->rcItem);
TCHAR szTabText[255];
TC_ITEM tci;

tci.cchTextMax = sizeof(szTabText)-1;
tci.pszText = szTabText;
tci.mask = TCIF_TEXT;

GetItem(lpDIS->itemID, &tci);

pDC->SaveDC();

pDC->SetBkColor(RGB(0,0,0));
pDC->SetTextColor(RGB(255,255,255));

if (!lpDIS->itemState & ODS_SELECTED)
rc.OffsetRect(4,3);
else
{
pDC->FillSolidRect(&rc, RGB(0,0,0));
rc.OffsetRect(6,4);
}

pDC->TextOut(rc.left, rc.top, szTabText);
pDC->RestoreDC(-1);
}

There are some standard method to translate among Cstring ,string and char[].

// Suppose
CString str;
std::string s;
char buf[SIZE];

// from CString to std::string
s = str;

// from std::string to CString
str = s.c_str();

// to char[]
_tcscpy(buf, str);
_tcscpy(buf, s.c_str());

// from char[]
str = buf;
s = buf;

Also, beware of unicode. If UNICODE is defined, you should convert between unicode and ansi versions. Better to use TCHAR instead of char and std::basic_string instead of std::string.

It depends on what you need to do when such an event takes places. If what you just want to be notified, FindFirstChangeNotification and ReadDirectoryChanges are enough.

If you need to intercept adn affect the operation somehow, I have heard it can be done with a kenerl-level driver(Filesystem Driver), but I have no experience about it.

How to read the sectors of physical drive under win32?

The API ReadFile is most useful function, and with it, you can read the physical sectors directly.

Here is a sample function, BOOL ReadSectors(…)

The WMI redist package is not always available on user’s system, for example, Windows NT4 and Windows 95/98.  And the Volume Serial Number of HDD can be easily changed while the CPU ID is not always available.

As Walter Wang said, the manufacturer of harddisk stored a unique Firmware Serial Number in the harddisk when it’s built. It doesn’t change with Operating System Changes or HDD formatting. So I should serve your purpose.

For source code example on how to retrieve this HDD Firmware Serial Number using DeviceIoControl, you can refer to following this article. It support IDE, SATA and SCSI drive type.

http://www.winsim.com/diskid32/diskid32.html

Local download: diskid32.zipp
Simple output of diskid32:

Primary Controller – Master drive

Drive Model Number________________: ST380011A
Drive Serial Number_______________: 3JV6TBXW
Drive Controller Revision Number__: 3.04
Controller Buffer Size on Drive___: 2097152 bytes
Drive Type________________________: Fixed
Drive Size________________________: 76264796672 bytes

Trying to read the drive IDs using the SCSI back door

Primary Controller – Master drive

Drive Model Number________________: ST380011A
Drive Serial Number_______________: 3JV6TBXW
Drive Controller Revision Number__: 3.04
Controller Buffer Size on Drive___: 2097152 bytes
Drive Type________________________: Fixed
Drive Size________________________: 76264796672 bytes

Trying to read the drive IDs using physical access wi

**** STORAGE_DEVICE_DESCRIPTOR for drive 0 ****
Vendor Id = (
Product Id = ST380011A
Product Revision = 3.04
Serial Number = 3JV6TBXW

Hard Drive Serial Number__________: 3JV6TBXW
Hard Drive Model Number___________: ST380011A
Computer ID_______________________: 652190462
MAC Address: 00-FF-5B-FE-6B-20
MAC Address: 00-0C-76-74-DA-50

There are two main steps:

• Load the bitmap from the file to a memory DC.
• Paint the content of the memory DC to the one which display the bitmap.

In MFC, there is no API to load a bitmap directly from a file, but you can use a Win32 API: LoadImage.
Here is the delaration of LoadImage.

HANDLE LoadImage(
HINSTANCE hinst, //handle to instance, if load from file, it should be NULL
LPCTSTR lpszName, //image resource name or the image file path
UINT uType, //image type
//1. IMAGE_BITMAP
//2. IMAGE_CURSOR
//3. IMAGE_ICON
int cxDesired, //desired width
int cyDesired, //desired height
UINT fuLoad //load options
);

After this,  the following steps are similar with loading a bitmap from resource. Here is a short example.

CClientDC dc(this);
CDC *mdc=new CDC;
mdc->CreateCompatibleDC(&dc);

CBitmap bitmap;
//CBitmap is devived from CGdiObject
//It has a handle:m_hObject, which can obtained with LoadImage
bitmap.m_hObject=(HBITMAP)::LoadImage(
NULL,
“b1.bmp”,
IMAGE_BITMAP,
500,
400,
LR_LOADFROMFILE);

mdc->SelectObject(bitmap);
CRect rect;
GetClientRect(&rect);
//BitBlt()
dc.BitBlt(0,0,rect.right,rect.bottom,mdc,0,0,SRCCOPY);

//release mdc
delete mdc;