How to open the Run window programmatically

Question

Everyone knows the Run window that you can open with the shortcut Windows+R or directly in the Windows menu then Run.
I'm wondering how to open this Run window programmatically.
This window seems to be part of explorer.exe.
Does anyone have an idea on it ?

Answer 1

Why would you want to open the Run window? Can't you execute the programs directly instead of going trough the run command? or am i missing something here? I did try to locate if it were in a separate .exe or something like that, but as you say it seems to be a part of explorer.exe. Have you considered using cmd.exe?

Answer 2

If you mean that it could open say at 8:00 am, then you can use autohotkey and simply write SendInput {Raw}{Lwin}{R} and then compile it as an .exe and put it as a cron job

Answer 3

You can use IShellDispatch::FileRun to achieve this.

See Using the Windows RunFile dialog - The documented and undocumented way for details and sample code.