Why do calls to waveOutGetPosition hang?

Question

I'm using the winmm.dll API method waveOutGetPosition to get the current position of the playback of a WAV file. Sometimes this works as expected for me, but eventually one of the calls never returns and my application locks up.

I found this thread with a few users who have experienced the same problem:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsgeneraldevelopmentissues/thread/c6a1e80e-4a18-47e7-af11-56a89f638ad7

but no solution. Has anyone run into this problem before?

Update: I was able to create a sample app that reproduces the problem reliably:

Problem with waveOutWrite and waveOutGetPosition deadlock

Still haven't fixed it, though.

Answer 1

Can you lock the call up in its own thread and kill it after a determined amount of time instead of letting it hang your app? Won't really fix the problem, but it would at least allow you to continue.

Answer 2

The solution is to use a MessageWindow instead of a callback - the MessageWindow allows waveOutGetPosition to return successfully without deadlocking.