December 5th, 2014

Killing a window timer prevents the WM_TIMER message from being generated for that timer, but it doesn't retroactively remove ones that were already generated

Calling Kill­Timer to cancel a window timer prevents WM_TIMER messages from being generated for that timer, even if one is overdue. In other words, give this sequence of operations:

SetTimer(hwnd, IDT_MYTIMER, 1000, NULL);
Sleep(2000);
KillTimer(hwnd, IDT_MYTIMER);

no WM_TIMER message is ever generated. Even though a timer became due during the Sleep, no timer message was generated during the sleep because timer messages are generated on demand, and nobody demanded one. Killing the timer then removes the ability to demand a timer message, and the result is that no message ever appears.

In general, this means that once you kill a timer, you will not receive any WM_TIMER messages for that timer.

Unless you demanded one while the timer was active and didn’t process it.

Let’s try a variation:

SetTimer(hwnd, IDT_MYTIMER, 1000, NULL);
Sleep(2000);
if (PeekMessage(&msg, NULL, WM_TIMER, WM_TIMER, 0)) {
 DispatchMessage(&msg);
}
KillTimer(hwnd, IDT_MYTIMER);

In this case, the Peek­Message function looks for a WM_TIMER message in the queue, and if none is found, it asks for one to be generated on the fly if a timer is due. It so happens that one is due (IDT_MY­TIMER), so the Peek­Message causes a WM_TIMER to be generated and placed in the queue. But it doesn’t remain in this state for long, because the message is removed from the queue by the Peek­Message function.

Okay, now let’s make things weird:

SetTimer(hwnd, IDT_MYTIMER, 1000, NULL);
Sleep(2000);
if (PeekMessage(&msg, NULL, WM_TIMER, WM_TIMER, PM_NOREMOVE)) {
 // oh hey there is an overdue timer, how about that
}
KillTimer(hwnd, IDT_MYTIMER);

This time, we passed the PM_NO­REMOVE flag. The window manager goes through the same process as before, first looking for a WM_TIMER message in the queue, and then failing to find one, generates one on the fly since the IDT_MY­TIMER timer is overdue. But the PM_NO­REMOVE flag makes things weird because it says, “Thanks for generating that message for me. But don’t remove it from the queue. Leave it there. I’ll deal with it later.”

You might do this if you want to stop processing if a timer elapses, but you don’t want to handle the timer immediately because you are in some sensitive state at the point you realize that you need to stop processing. Instead, you want to return back out to the main message loop and let it deal with the timer.

BOOL DoWorkUntilTheNextTimer()
{
 BOOL fFinished = FALSE;
 MSG msg;
 PrepareToDoWork();
 while (!PeekMessage(&msg, NULL, WM_TIMER, WM_TIMER, PM_NOREMOVE)) {
  if (AnyWorkLeft()) DoSomeWork();
  else { fFinished = TRUE; break; }
 }
 CleanUpAfterDoingWork();
 return fFinished;
}

And then you might call it like this:

void DoWorkForUpToOneSecond()
{
 SetTimer(hwnd, IDT_MYTIMER, 1000, NULL);
 DoWorkUntilTheNextTimer();
 KillTimer(hwnd, IDT_MYTIMER);
}

The Kill­Timer will prevent any new timer messages from being generated for IDT_MY­TIMER, but it does not go back in time and retroactively un-generate the timer message that was generated when Do­Work­Until­The­Next­Timer asked to see if there were any timer messages.

You are now in the strange situation where a subsequent call to Peek­Message or Get­Message will retrieve a timer message for a timer that is no longer active!

This is captured in the MSDN documentation with the simple sentence, “The Kill­Timer function does not remove WM_TIMER messages already posted to the message queue.”

Topics
Code

Author

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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