Python, List running processes 64Bit Windows

Question

Hey Guys,

I amm writing a little python script that will grab information from VMs of Windows that I am running.

At the moment I can list the processes on a 32bit XP machine with the following method:

http://code.activestate.com/recipes/305279/

Is it possible to somehow detect the version of windows running and excute a different method for getting the processes on a 64bit machine, I am trying to get the processes from a 64Bit Vista and 64bit Windows 7.

Any ideas?

Cheers

Eef

Answer 1

You should be able to do this by exposing Windows Management Instrumentation within each VM. This tool gives you access to a bunch of system data, including processes, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc757287%28WS.10%29.aspx

You should be able to popen one of the commands in the preceding link to get the info you're looking for.

Answer 2

There is another recipe on activestate that does a similar thing, but uses the Performance Data Helper library (PDH) instead.

I have tested this on my Windows 7 64bit machine and it works there - so presumably the same function will work on both 32bit and 64 bit windows.

You can find the recipe here: http://code.activestate.com/recipes/303339/

Another method is using WMI, there is an example here in Python using the wmi module:

http://timgolden.me.uk/python/wmi/cookbook.html

import wmi
c = wmi.WMI ()

for process in c.Win32_Process ():
  print process.ProcessId, process.Name