How to Correctly Check if a Process is running and Stop it

Question

What is the correct way of determining if a process is running, for example FireFox, and stopping it?

I did some looking around and the best way I found was this:

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Answer 1

Thanks @Joey. It's what I am looking for.

I just bring some improvements:

• to take into account multiple processes
• to avoid reaching the timeout when all processes have terminated
• to package the whole in a function

---

function Stop-Processes {
    param(
        [parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $processName,
                                     $timeout = 5
    )
    $processList = Get-Process $processName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    if ($processList) {
        # Try gracefully first
        $processList.CloseMainWindow() | Out-Null

        # Wait until all processes have terminated or until timeout
        for ($i = 0 ; $i -le $timeout; $i ++){
            $AllHaveExited = $True
            $processList | % {
                $process = $_
                If (!$process.HasExited){
                    $AllHaveExited = $False
                }                    
            }
            If ($AllHaveExited){
                Return
            }
            sleep 1
        }
        # Else: kill
        $processList | Stop-Process -Force        
    }
}