Check if a specific exe file is running

Question

I want to know how i can check a program in a specific location if it is running. For example there are two locations for test.exe in c:\loc1\test.exe and c:\loc2\test.exe. I only wanted to know if c:\loc1\test.exe is running and not all instances of test.exe.

Answer 1

try this... I use it to determine at startup if another process is already running with the same name as the exe I'm trying to start, and then just bring that one to foreground, (and to focus) if it is already running... You could modify it to take a process name and test for that specific name... This will tell you if there is a process running with a certain name, but not where that process was loaded from ...

If there is a process running with the specified name, then if that process had an exposed accessible method that returns where it was loaded from, you could call that method on the running process, otherwise, I don't know..

But just out of curiosity, why do you care, unless they're different? And if they're different in some way, code to use that difference (whatever it is) to detect which is loaded. But if they're the same how can it matter which on-disk image was used to load it?

    [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    private static extern bool SetForegroundWindow(IntPtr hWnd);
    [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    private static extern bool ShowWindowAsync(IntPtr hWnd, int nCmdShow);
    [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    private static extern bool IsIconic(IntPtr hWnd);

    private const int SW_HIDE = 0;
    private const int SW_SHOWNORMAL = 1;
    private const int SW_SHOWMINIMIZED = 2;
    private const int SW_SHOWMAXIMIZED = 3;
    private const int SW_SHOWNOACTIVATE = 4;
    private const int SW_RESTORE = 9;
    private const int SW_SHOWDEFAULT = 10;

 private static bool IsAlreadyRunning()
    {
        // get all processes by Current Process name
        Process[] processes = 
            Process.GetProcessesByName(
                Process.GetCurrentProcess().ProcessName);

        // if there is more than one process...
        if (processes.Length > 1) 
        {
            // if other process id is OUR process ID...
            // then the other process is at index 1
            // otherwise other process is at index 0
            int n = (processes[0].Id == Process.GetCurrentProcess().Id) ? 1 : 0;

            // get the window handle
            IntPtr hWnd = processes[n].MainWindowHandle;

            // if iconic, we need to restore the window
            if (IsIconic(hWnd)) ShowWindowAsync(hWnd, SW_RESTORE);

            // Bring it to the foreground
            SetForegroundWindow(hWnd);
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }

Answer 2

System.Reflection.Assembly.GetEntryAssembly()

This will bring for you a lot of info about the entry assembly, such as:

System.Reflection.Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().CodeBase;

This will tell the location of the running assembly.

Answer 3

You could use a named mutex, that's named off of the directory structure the program is running in.

Answer 4

bool isRunning = Process.GetProcessesByName("test")
                .FirstOrDefault(p => p.MainModule.FileName.StartsWith(@"c:\loc1")) != default(Process);

Answer 5

This function may help:

using System.Diagnostics;

public bool IsProcessOpen(string name)
{
    foreach (Process clsProcess in Process.GetProcesses()) {
        if (clsProcess.ProcessName.Contains(name))
        {
            return true;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

Source: http://www.dreamincode.net/code/snippet1541.htm

Answer 6

You should iterate over all existing processes and then check their MainModule property for the file name you are looking for. Something like this

using System.Diagnostics;
using System.IO;

//...

string fileNameToFilter = Path.GetFullPath("c:\\loc1\\test.exe");

foreach (Process p in Process.GetProcesses())
{
   string fileName = Path.GetFullPath(p.MainModule.FileName);

   //cehck for equality (case insensitive)
   if (string.Compare(fileNameToFilter, fileName, true) == 0)
   {
      //matching...
   }
}