How to check if a thread handle should be closed

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C++

I am writing a server application which has a socket which listens for a connection request from a client. There will only ever be one client. So I have a while(1) loop which checks if there is a socket connection to a client and contains the accept() method. When accept() returns, a new thread is created to handle the client connection. If the client disconnects, the while(1) loop will detect this using getsockname() and then allow accept() to make another connection and a new thread to handle the connection.

I want to ensure that if a socket connection is closed that I close its thread handle as well in order to prevent a memory leak. But I need to do this in the while(1) loop. The first time this loop is entered after startup, the handle will not be valid, so if I do CloseHandle(hThread), I get an error. If I check if(hThread != NULL) before I call CloseHandle(hThread) it still complains about the 'if' statement because the handle is invalid. How can I chnage my code to ensure I deallocate the memory for the thread handle before a new one is created?

Please could somebody tell me where I am going wrong.

DWORD WINAPI StartListeningThread(void *param)//(LPVOID iValue)
{
	CCCDSocket listenSock;
	SOCKET ls;
        HANDLE hRecvThread; 

	//create socket up to and including listen()
	bool listenSockReturn = listenSock.CreateListeningSocket(ls);
	
	//continually check if the listening socket has accepted a connection
        //request from a client, and a socket connection has been made. If the
        //connected socket loses its connection, accept a new connection request
	while(1) 
	{
                if(hRecvThread != NULL)//this causes an error at run-time as the 
                                       //hRecvThread is not valid!!! But that is
                                       //what I want to test for.
                {
                    CloseHandle(hRecvThread)
                }

         	//check if the connected socket has been closed, as then a new 
                //connection request needs to be accepted
		struct sockaddr_storage addr;
		int addrLen = sizeof(addr);

                //this will fail if the socket has been closed
		if(getsockname(sr,(LPSOCKADDR)&addr, &addrLen) ==SOCKET_ERROR)
		{
			//accept the new connection request from the client 
			sr = accept(ls, 0, 0);

			DWORD dwClientHandlerThreadID;
			hRecvThread = CreateThread(NULL, NULL, 
                                                    CreateClientHandlerThread, 
                                                    NULL, NULL, 
                                                    &dwClientHandlerThreadID);
		}
	}
	return 0;		
}