console output froozing app

In Windows all applications which have a graphical user interface (GUI) are 'event based'. This includes MFC, Windows Forms and WPF applications.

GUI applications have what's called a message loop to which the OS posts appropriate messages when events (such as user interaction) occur. These messages are removed from the loop and acted on where necessary.

In contrast non-GUI applications don't need or have a message loop to process events. Console applications, for example, use polling (i.e constant checking) to determine whether there has been any user input.

The Process.WaitForInput idle waits for a process with a message loop to enter an idle state i.e. when it is waiting for the next message to arrive.

As cmd.exe is not a GUI application, this method will wait 'for ever' which is one reason why your application was freezing. 

I think there are two problems which are causing the freeze:

1. You haven't closed the StreamWriter to flush the command line to the redirected standard input.

2. You're using Process.WaitForInputIdle on a process (cmd.exe) which doesn't have a message loop.

So, I'd try it like this: 

            thingstohidewhenclosingsettings();

            thingstoshowfornotebook();

            Process myProcess2 = new Process();

            myProcess2.StartInfo.FileName = @"C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe";          

            myProcess2.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;

            myProcess2.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;

            myProcess2.StartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;

            myProcess2.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;

          

            myProcess2.Start();

          

            StreamWriter myStreamWriter3 = myProcess2.StandardInput;

            myStreamWriter3.WriteLine("netstat -n");

            myStreamWriter3.Close();

            string outputx = myProcess2.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();

           

            int exitCode = myProcess2.ExitCode;

            myProcess2.Close();

            notebookbox.Text = outputx;

            return;