Crashing When Creating a Process - c++

Question

I am trying to use msdn function (CreateProcess) in C++ in order to run an application. I don't get any errors but when I run it, it crashes. What I did also notice it that it created a process, but it didn't run the text file it was supposed to.
My code:
#include <windows.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
void createPro ();
int main()
{
createPro();
}
void createPro () {
LPCTSTR lpApplicationName = "C:/Users/Andyy/Desktop/hello.txt";
LPSTARTUPINFO lpStartupInfo;
LPPROCESS_INFORMATION lpProcessInfo;
memset(&lpStartupInfo, 0, sizeof(lpStartupInfo));
memset(&lpProcessInfo, 0, sizeof(lpProcessInfo));
if (!CreateProcess(lpApplicationName,
NULL, NULL, NULL,
NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL,
lpStartupInfo,
lpProcessInfo
)
) {
cout << "Failed to create process" << lpApplicationName << endl;
}
cout << "Program exec: " << lpApplicationName << endl;
}
It creates the process but it fails to run the text file and no errors showed in compilers. Thanks in advance.
Return error: Process returned -1073741819 (0xC0000005)

Answer 1

CreateProcess is used to create process objects from executable files. You are passing a text file which is not an executable file. Presumably you are actually trying to show the text file in the default text editor. Use ShellExecuteEx to do that.
Beyond that, you don't allocate the two structs that are needed in your call to CreateProcess. Instead you declare pointers to structs, and leave the pointer uninitialized. I expect that this is the cause of the access violation error 0xC0000005. For future reference, you would allocate and initialise these structs like so:
STARTUPINFO StartupInfo = { sizeof StartupInfo };
PROCESS_INFORMATION ProcessInfo = { 0 };
Then pass &StartupInfo and &ProcessInfo to CreateProcess. Of course, I'm just adding this advice for completeness. You'll be throwing away all the code relating to CreateProcess and calling ShellExecuteEx instead.