c# - Detect if child GUI is hung from a parent process -

in application there parent process spawns children. trying leverage parent process watch on children ensure gui remains responsive, , if not, generate dump file.

the problem i'm running process.responding detecting gui hangs (such sleeping on gui thread or stack overflow) not others (such deadlocks on gui thread).

so question is: how else can check whether or not gui of child still updating parent process?

edit: based on comments far guess should clarify. responsible maintaining framework of application plugin architecture heavily multi-threaded , has code base of hundreds of thousands of lines of code, of outside control. while understand ideal approach not hang in first place, still happens on occasion. these situations gracefully , collect debug information along way issue can addressed.

another approach i've considered using gui thread touch file , have parent process check time stamp of file. however, i'd rather not perform file operations on gui thread.

after few failed attempts strategies mentioned above, here's how ended solving this:

1. at child application start save reference gui thread
2. a timer started periodically checks thread state of gui thread (about every 200ms). if threadstate.running, report process responding parent through inter-process communication.
3. in parent process keep dictionary of process ids , time process last reported responding. if child still alive hasn't reported responding result within timeout period, user notified process not responding.

so far, seems working expect to.