Kill child process when parent process is killed

Question

I\'m creating new processes using System.Diagnostics.Process class from my application.

I want this processes to be killed when/if my application has cr

Answer 1

This post is intended as an extension to @Matt Howells' answer, specifically for those who run into problems with using Job Objects under Vista or Win7, especially if you get an access denied error ('5') when calling AssignProcessToJobObject.

tl;dr

To ensure compatibility with Vista and Win7, add the following manifest to the .NET parent process:

Note that when you add new manifest in Visual Studio 2012 it will contain the above snippet already so you do not need to copy it from hear. It will also include a node for Windows 8.

full explanation

Your job association will fail with an access denied error if the process you're starting is already associated with another job. Enter Program Compatibility Assistant, which, starting in Windows Vista, will assign all kinds of processes to its own jobs.

In Vista you can mark your application to be excluded from PCA by simply including an application manifest. Visual Studio seems to do this for .NET apps automatically, so you're fine there.

A simple manifest no longer cuts it in Win7. [1] There, you have to specifically specify that you're compatible with Win7 with the tag in your manifest. [2]

This led me to worry about Windows 8. Will I have to change my manifest once again? Apparently there's a break in the clouds, as Windows 8 now allows a process to belong to multiple jobs. [3] So I haven't tested it yet, but I imagine that this madness will be over now if you simply include a manifest with the supportedOS information.

Tip 1: If you're developing a .NET app with Visual Studio, as I was, here [4] are some nice instructions on how to customize your application manifest.

Tip 2: Be careful with launching your application from Visual Studio. I found that, after adding the appropriate manifest, I still had problems with PCA when launching from Visual Studio, even if I used Start without Debugging. Launching my application from Explorer worked, however. After manually adding devenv for exclusion from PCA using the registry, starting applications that used Job Objects from VS started working as well. [5]

Tip 3: If you ever want to know if PCA is your problem, try launching your application from the command line, or copy the program to a network drive and run it from there. PCA is automatically disabled in those contexts.

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cjacks/archive/2009/06/18/pca-changes-for-windows-7-how-to-tell-us-you-are-not-an-installer-take-2-because-we-changed-the-rules-on-you.aspx

[2] http://ayende.com/blog/4360/how-to-opt-out-of-program-compatibility-assistant

[3] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms681949(v=vs.85).aspx: "A process can be associated with more than one job in Windows 8"

[4] How can I embed an application manifest into an application using VS2008?

[5] How to stop the Visual Studio debugger starting my process in a job object?