programmatically kill a process in vista/windows 7 in C#

Question

I want to kill a process programmatically in vista/windows 7 (I\'m not sure if there\'s significant problems in the implementation of the UAC between the two to make a diffe

Answer 1

You are correct in that it's because you don't have administrative priveleges. You can solve this by installing a service under the local system user and running a custom command against it as needed.

In your windows form app:

private enum SimpleServiceCustomCommands { KillProcess = 128 };

ServiceControllerPermission scp = new ServiceControllerPermission(ServiceControllerPermissionAccess.Control, Environment.MachineName, "SERVICE_NAME");
scp.Assert();
System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController serviceCon = new System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController("SERVICE_NAME", Environment.MachineName);
serviceCon.ExecuteCommand((int)SimpleServiceCustomCommands.KillProcess);

myProcess = System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(psi);

In your service:

private enum SimpleServiceCustomCommands { KillProcess = 128 };

protected override void OnCustomCommand(int command)
{
    switch (command)
    {
        case (int)SimpleServiceCustomCommands.KillProcess:
            if(killProcess)
            {
                System.Diagnostics.Process[] process = System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessesByName("MyProcessName");
                // Before starting the new process make sure no other MyProcessName is running.
                foreach (System.Diagnostics.Process p in process)
                {
                    p.Kill();
                }
            }
            break;
        default:
            break;
    }
}

Answer 2

I'll add the code for Simon Buchan's suggestion. It makes sense and should work as well, assuming your windows form is what launched the process in the first place.

Here's where you create the process. Notice the variable myProc. That's your handle on it:

System.Diagnostics.Process myProc = new System.Diagnostics.Process();
myProc.EnableRaisingEvents=false;
myProc.StartInfo.FileName="PATH_TO_EXE";
myProc.Start();

Later, just kill it with:

myProc.Kill();