displaying elapsed time?

I am wondering if there is a simple way to displaying time elapsed as is it is happening. Instead of getting the date time at start and subtracting from datetime at end. I am looking for a 00:00:00 format as in hrs:min:sec. I thought about maybe adding a timer and somehow converting the milliseconds into the others. Or same with using the stopwatch class.

My main issue is displaying it in the 00:00:00 format as it happens.

You should set a start datetime, the use a timer to fire every 100ms (or so). In the tick-event you substract the startdate time from the current date time and you update the label

I was thinking of that approach already, I just wanted to see if there was a better way of going about it first.

The way I would do it is use 5 labels, 00:00:00, the first 00 would be named Hours, the second 00 would be named Minutes, and the third 00 would be named Seconds. On the form loadup make the timer start, this timer should have an interval of 1 second or in other words just make it 1,000. Then in the timer's tick sub you would do something along the lines of this;

Code:

---

    Private Sub Timer1_Tick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Timer1.Tick
        If Seconds.Text <= 9 Then
            Seconds.Text = 0 & Seconds.Text + 1
        ElseIf Seconds.Text >= 10 Then
            Seconds.Text = Seconds.Text + 1
        End If
        If Seconds.Text = 60 Then
            If Minutes.Text <= 9 Then
                Minutes.Text = 0 & Minutes.Text + 1
            ElseIf Minutes.Text >= 10 Then
                Minutes.Text = Minutes.Text + 1
            End If
            Seconds.Text = 0
        ElseIf Minutes.Text = 60 Then
            If Hours.Text <= 9 Then
                Hours.Text = 0 & Hours.Text + 1
            ElseIf Hours.Text >= 10 Then
                Hours.Text = Hours.Text + 1
            End If
            Minutes.Text = 0
        End If
    End Sub

---

Ok maybe I will try that.

i'd use a stopwatch:

vb.net Code:

Public Class Form1
 
    Dim sw As New Stopwatch
    Private WithEvents tmr As New Timer
 
    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        sw.Start()
        tmr.Interval = 1000 '1 second
        tmr.Start()
    End Sub
 
    Private Sub tmr_Tick(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles tmr.Tick
        Label1.Text = String.Format("{0:00}:{1:00}:{2:00}", sw.Elapsed.Hours, sw.Elapsed.Minutes, sw.Elapsed.Seconds)
    End Sub
 
End Class

Thanks paul. I tried both, the stopwatch approach is a little easier on performance, which is needed in this application Thank you both.