Trying to open main/sensor windows through Rainmeter

[Sunyata]

I'm trying to make a Rainmeter skin that, when clicked, will open the main/sensor windows of HWinfo (or ideally just the sensor window, if possible.)
I'm pretty new to this so I really don't have much of an idea what I'm doing, although I get the feeling what I want either requires the pro version, or hasn't been implemented.

Usually, running the application executable through a skin, as such:

LeftMouseUpAction=["C:\Program Files\HWiNFO64\HWiNFO64.exe"]

will open the default window for that application. While this works, it generates a UAC prompt every time.

I hoped to be able to open *just* the sensor window, as can be done through the notification icon, and without the UAC prompt. With my meagre understanding, I figured that this would probably require some kind of option or argument to be passed to the executable, and those are obviously limited to the pro version. I just figured I would post and ask in case I'm missing some obvious or easy solution. I imagine this is a pretty niche desire and so there's probably not a command line argument implemented to specifically open one window.

 

[Martin]

This probably isn't easy as it would require sending a custom window message to the HWiNFO application. Not sure if this is possible from Rainmeter.

 

[Sunyata]

This probably isn't easy as it would require sending a custom window message to the HWiNFO application. Not sure if this is possible from Rainmeter.

Thank you for the fast reply! I'm asking on the Rainmeter forums as well, from looking through skins the only hint to a solution I can find is a skin that starts Discord like this:

LeftMouseUpAction=["C:\Users\UserDirectory\AppData\Local\Discord\Update.exe" --processStart Discord.exe]

That's the only skin I can find that does anything beyond simply pointing at a file in the directory structure. I don't really know what "processStart" is exactly, but that's the only example of passing some kind of an argument or option to an application that I can find. I only asked here as I figured whatever I would need to send to HWinfo to get it to open just the sensor window would be specific to the application itself, and if such a command exists it may be a feature of the pro version anyway.

 

[Sunyata]

This probably isn't easy as it would require sending a custom window message to the HWiNFO application. Not sure if this is possible from Rainmeter.

I received a reply on the Rainmeter forums that pointed me to a plugin which seems to be able to send a window message as you described. Do you have any idea what parameters I should try? It seems to only need two values, a WindowName or WindowClass that will idenfity the Sensors Status window, and a WindowMessage that will tell it to open that window. From what I infer from the manual page it sends it through the SendMessage API, if that's any help. I'm more than happy to experiment to figure it out, I just have no idea what the parameters for the window would be.

 

[Martin]

Try to send the WM_SHOWWINDOW message.

 

[Sunyata]

Try to send the WM_SHOWWINDOW message.

I've tried some window spy tools and they're showing the Window Class as "#32770", does that seem right?

 

[Sunyata]

Try to send the WM_SHOWWINDOW message.

I messed around with it a bit and I was able to figure out the proper syntax for sending the command through Rainmeter, but no matter what I did nothing seemed to respond to any of the system-defined messages I tried. With the exception of one application (not HWinfo) becoming unable to be closed after trying to send something to it, nothing had any effect. I'm not sure why this is, but from what I was able to glean about window messages, it may be due to the message going to an improper message queue, or due to the fact that I need to be sending a user-defined message (0400 or above in hex notation) rather than a system message (0001-03FF). In any case, it's certainly beyond my ability to figure out on my own.
One thing I wanted to ask, out of curiosity, was if you remember whether or not HWinfo utilizes any window messages in the user-defined spectrum(0400 in hex/1024 in decimal, and above). I'm not particularly concerned about it but I was just curious if the reason I see no response at all from anything I tried is that applications can only receive messages in the system-defined spectrum from system-level processes. It seems like that is the case from what I've looked at, but I can't be certain I'm understanding it correctly as I don't have much context to go on.

 

[Martin]

No, HWiNFO doesn't use messages in the WM_USER space.