QueryPerformanceCounter and overflows

Question

I\'m using QueryPerformanceCounter to do some timing in my application. However, after running it for a few days the application seems to stop functioning properly. If I simply

Answer 1

Using a nanosecond-scale timer to control something like Sleep() that at best is precise to several milliseconds (and usually, several dozen milliseconds) is somewhat controversary anyway.

A different approach you might consider would be to use WaitForSingleObject or a similar function. This burns less CPU cycles, causes a trillion fewer context switches over the day, and is more reliable than Sleep(0), too.

You could for example create a semapore and never touch it in normal operation. The semaphore exists only so you can wait on something, if you don't have anything better to wait on. Then you can specify a timeout in milliseconds up to 49 days long with a single syscall. And, it will not only be less work, it will be much more accurate too.

The advantage is that if "something happens", so you want to break up earlier than that, you only need to signal the semaphore. The wait call will return instantly, and you will know from the WAIT_OBJECT_0 return value that it was due to being signaled, not due to time running out. And all that without complicated logic and counting cycles.