Renaming A Running Process' File Image On Windows

Question

I have a Windows service application on Vista SP1 and I\'ve found that users are renaming its executable file (while it\'s running) and then rebooting, thus causing it to fa

Answer 1

There are two aspects to the notion of file here:

1. The data on the disk - that's the actual file.

2. The file-name (could be several or none) which you can give that data - called directory entries.

What you are renaming is the directory entry, which still references the same data. Windows doesn't care about your doing so, as it still can access the data when it needs to. The running process is mapped to the data, not the name.