Restore windows minimized at startup

It's always interesting to be able to answer one's own question!

Using FindWindowEx can find the windows I'm after, although only by virtue of them being children of the process I'm running. I suspect I would need a different approach for windows of other processes.

Now that I have the handles of the windows, I need to get the window titles. Remembering that these windows are minimized and have not been restored at all since application startup, I have used GetWindowTextLength and it produces a zero length title, not too surprisingly.

I have also tried restoring the windows "invisibly" with layered window attributes and using SendMessage to repaint them, then minimizing and resetting the attributes in the hope that might refresh the window text/title, but to no avail.

So, another question: I have the handle of a window that is minimized when the application starts -- how do I obtain the window title without visibly restoring the window?

Thanks again for any advice or example code!