The DestroyWindow function destroys the specified window. The function sends WM_DESTROY and WM_NCDESTROY messages to the window to deactivate it and remove the keyboard focus from it. The function also destroys the window's menu, flushes the thread message queue, destroys timers, removes clipboard ownership, and breaks the clipboard viewer chain (if the window is at the top of the viewer chain).

If the specified window is a parent or owner window, DestroyWindow automatically destroys the associated child or owned windows when it destroys the parent or owner window. The function first destroys child or owned windows, and then it destroys the parent or owner window.

DestroyWindow also destroys modeless dialog boxes created by the CreateDialog function.

Syntax

BOOL DestroyWindow(      
    HWND hWnd
);

Parameters

hWnd

[in] Handle to the window to be destroyed.

Return Value

If the function succeeds, the return value is nonzero.

If the function fails, the return value is zero. To get extended error information, call GetLastError.

Remarks

A thread cannot use DestroyWindow to destroy a window created by a different thread.

If the window being destroyed is a child window that does not have the WS_EX_NOPARENTNOTIFY style, a WM_PARENTNOTIFY message is sent to the parent.

Example

For an example, see Destroying a Window.

Function Information

Minimum DLL Version	user32.dll
Header	Declared in Winuser.h, include Windows.h
Import library	User32.lib
Minimum operating systems	Windows 95, Windows NT 3.1
Unicode	Implemented as Unicode version.

See Also

Windows Overview, CreateDialog, CreateWindow, CreateWindowEx, WM_DESTROY, WM_NCDESTROY, WM_PARENTNOTIFY