Monitor when an exe is launched

Question

I have some services that an application needs running in order for some of the app\'s features to work. I would like to enable the option to only start the external Window

Answer 1

From this article, you can use WMI (the System.Management namespace) in your service to watch for process start events.

 void WaitForProcess()
{
    ManagementEventWatcher startWatch = new ManagementEventWatcher(
      new WqlEventQuery("SELECT * FROM Win32_ProcessStartTrace"));
    startWatch.EventArrived
                        += new EventArrivedEventHandler(startWatch_EventArrived);
    startWatch.Start();

    ManagementEventWatcher stopWatch = new ManagementEventWatcher(
      new WqlEventQuery("SELECT * FROM Win32_ProcessStopTrace"));
    stopWatch.EventArrived
                        += new EventArrivedEventHandler(stopWatch_EventArrived);
    stopWatch.Start();
}

  static void stopWatch_EventArrived(object sender, EventArrivedEventArgs e) {
    stopWatch.Stop();
    Console.WriteLine("Process stopped: {0}"
                      , e.NewEvent.Properties["ProcessName"].Value);
  }

  static void startWatch_EventArrived(object sender, EventArrivedEventArgs e) {
    startWatch.Stop();
    Console.WriteLine("Process started: {0}"
                      , e.NewEvent.Properties["ProcessName"].Value);
  }
}

WMI allows for fairly sophisticated queries; you can modify the queries here to trigger your event handler only when your watched app launches, or on other criteria. Here's a quick introduction, from a C# perspective.