How to kill processes by name? (Win32 API) - c

Question

Basically, I have a program which will be launched more than once. So, there will be two or more processes launched of the program.
I want to use the Win32 API and kill/terminate all the processes with a specific name.
I have seen examples of killing A process, but not multiple processes with the exact same name(but different parameters).

Answer 1

Try below code, killProcessByName() will kill any process with name filename :
#include <windows.h>
#include <process.h>
#include <Tlhelp32.h>
#include <winbase.h>
#include <string.h>
void killProcessByName(const char *filename)
{
HANDLE hSnapShot = CreateToolhelp32Snapshot(TH32CS_SNAPALL, NULL);
PROCESSENTRY32 pEntry;
pEntry.dwSize = sizeof (pEntry);
BOOL hRes = Process32First(hSnapShot, &pEntry);
while (hRes)
{
if (strcmp(pEntry.szExeFile, filename) == 0)
{
HANDLE hProcess = OpenProcess(PROCESS_TERMINATE, 0,
(DWORD) pEntry.th32ProcessID);
if (hProcess != NULL)
{
TerminateProcess(hProcess, 9);
CloseHandle(hProcess);
}
}
hRes = Process32Next(hSnapShot, &pEntry);
}
CloseHandle(hSnapShot);
}
int main()
{
killProcessByName("notepad++.exe");
return 0;
}
Note: The code is case sensitive to filename, you can edit it for case insensitive.

Answer 2

I just ran into a similar problem. Here's what I came up with...
void myClass::killProcess()
{
const int maxProcIds = 1024;
DWORD procList[maxProcIds];
DWORD procCount;
char* exeName = "ExeName.exe";
char processName[MAX_PATH];
// get the process by name
if (!EnumProcesses(procList, sizeof(procList), &procCount))
return;
// convert from bytes to processes
procCount = procCount / sizeof(DWORD);
// loop through all processes
for (DWORD procIdx=0; procIdx<procCount; procIdx++)
{
// get a handle to the process
HANDLE procHandle = OpenProcess(PROCESS_ALL_ACCESS, FALSE, procList[procIdx]);
// get the process name
GetProcessImageFileName(procHandle, processName, sizeof(processName));
// terminate all pocesses that contain the name
if (strstr(processName, exeName))
TerminateProcess(procHandle, 0);
CloseHandle(procHandle);
}
}

Answer 3

void kill(std::string filename, int delay)
{
filename += ".exe";
HANDLE hSnapShot = CreateToolhelp32Snapshot(TH32CS_SNAPALL, NULL);
PROCESSENTRY32 pEntry;
pEntry.dwSize = sizeof(pEntry);
BOOL hRes = Process32First(hSnapShot, &pEntry);
while (hRes) {
if (filename.c_str() == pEntry.szExeFile) {
HANDLE hProcess = OpenProcess(PROCESS_TERMINATE, 0, (DWORD)pEntry.th32ProcessID);
if (hProcess != NULL) {
TerminateProcess(hProcess, 9);
CloseHandle(hProcess);
}
}
hRes = Process32Next(hSnapShot, &pEntry);
}
CloseHandle(hSnapShot);
}
// usage
int main()
{
kill("notepad");
}
I know this is old but i feel as if i should explain some of the issues and bad practice with the 2011 anwer. There is absolutely no reason for you to be writing c in c++ unless you need to. The use of const char array is unnecessary as std::string::c_str() already returns a pointer to the string. As you can see in my snippet... - filename is no longer a const char, instead its a string because its native c++ and good practice - strcmp check is removed as there is no reason to compare string differences. Instead we check if they're equivalent - We append ".exe" to filename so you can type the process name without the .exe There is simply no reason to write c in c++ unless its mandatory.