Self-Dustruction

[Zulander1]

Hello
is there a way to make a progra delete it self, copying a command to the memory and runing form the mem after the prog has ended, be cause i also thought of puting stuff in the registery but i don't what that, how could i make a program delete it self, like Kill App.path & "\Filename.exe"
with-out othere help form othere app's

[Dim]

well you can't actually kill your program from with in your program. But there are several things you can do to make it happen. First maybe send information to the task sched. that comes with windows. Or like you mentioned, send info to the registry and make it del your program on a specific date or whatever. But as for killing from with in i don't think that's possible. You COULD however del files that are needed by your appl to run...like some dlls and ocx are needed but are not used through out the whole run time, so have them deleted and the next time the user tries to use a certain function it will give him an error and close the program...


gl,
D!m

I had to do this once and I came up with a pretty kewl way of doing it.. Along with your application make another application no gui or anything just One line of code that will kill whatever yur application is!

To keep users from running it out of curiousity I used the Shell function in the small program to retrieve a password I used when I called the program from the big one. like

c:\whatever\deleter.exe -KillerPassword

The small program will check the path if the password is right it will delete your application. If your application is running use some simple API to close it down.

wallah..Not to fancy but it works nicely =]

Hmm...whenever I do something like Kill "C:\myapps\app\appname.exe", I get an error. Or any file that is in use. Even Deltree.exe won't delete something that is in use.

[Jop]

magadass, how did you managed to delete the deleter.exe then? Just curious because you're with the same problem then

[XxEvilxX]

ok here what you do you open autoexec.bat and tell it to delete your program say like

open "C:\Autoexec.bat" For Append As #1
print #1,"Deltree " & App.Path & "\" & App.ExeName & ".Exe"
close #1

so now next time they load up the computer the file well be gone

Actually, there is another way. Through bat file..as what you did, but not using autoexec. But you have to have the file closed :P.

Open App.path & "\tempdel.bat" For Output As #1
'Print #1, "@ECHO OFF" 'Turn this on if you want the user to see what your doing
Print #1, "IF EXIST " & """" & App.Path & "\project1.exe" & """" & " DEL " & """" & App.Path & "\project1.exe" & """"
Print #1, "Del """ & App.Path & "\tempdel.bat"""
Close #1

This is cool though .

[Edited by Matthew Gates on 07-15-2000 at 07:03 PM]

Your left with nothing..The program will only execute if it finds the password in the shell so you have a 3kb file just chillin there.

[XxEvilxX]

and after my code i should you you should restart the computer and im not writing the hole program for you

[Zulander1]

Hey i have found the answer it's easy
i made small Qbasic dos prog that would kill it self
so that's it
Shell "Selfkill.exe" & app.path & "Filename.exe",Vbhide
END
Voila !!
that's it !

[kedaman]

Hehe, just noticed your """"""""""'s and could explain;

"" inside the " "quotes means one ", so you don't have to put four" to add a" in your text.

For instace:

"text""text"
"text"""
"""text"
""""

[Martin]

Hey guys

I once read about an API that would free the file somehow, so it can be deleted though still running. I don't remember the name, though. I'll post later if I find out about it.

Originally posted by kedaman
Hehe, just noticed your """"""""""'s and could explain;

"" inside the " "quotes means one ", so you don't have to put four" to add a" in your text.

For instace:

"text""text"
"text"""
"""text"
""""

Heh kedaman, I don't feel comfortable with messing around with the Kill or Del command to much.
It makes me nervous.
One command Kill "C:\" or Del C:\ can screw up your whole career ;].
That is why I did all those quotes, either way, it still works.

[Zulander1]

Kill or del
will only delete the file's that are not hidden or direcotory's

[Litehouse]

Hey everyone, I figured it out! By CREATING a batch file within your app, running it, and then actually killing your own process, the timing should be just right to delete itself... Here is the code that WORKS!

Option Explicit
Public Declare Function _
  GetWindowThreadProcessId Lib "user32" _
  (ByVal hwnd As Long, _
  lpdwProcessId As Long) As Long

Public Declare Function _
  GetLastError Lib "kernel32" () As Long

Public Declare Function _
  OpenProcess Lib "kernel32" _
  (ByVal dwDesiredAccess As Long, _
  ByVal bInheritHandle As Long, _
  ByVal dwProcessId As Long) As Long

Public Declare Function _
  TerminateProcess Lib "kernel32" _
  (ByVal hProcess As Long, _
  ByVal uExitCode As Long) As Long

Public Const PROCESS_TERMINATE = &H1

Public Function KillApp(WindowHandle As Long)
  Dim lngTest As Long
  Dim ProcessID As Long
  lngTest = GetWindowThreadProcessId(WindowHandle, ProcessID)
  If lngTest = 0 Then
    lngTest = GetLastError
    MsgBox "Failed with error code: " & lngTest, _
      vbOKOnly + vbCritical, "Error"
    Exit Function
  End If
  lngTest = OpenProcess(PROCESS_TERMINATE, 1, ProcessID)
  If lngTest = 0 Then
    lngTest = GetLastError
    MsgBox "Failed with error code: " & lngTest, _
      vbOKOnly + vbCritical, "Error"
    Exit Function
  End If
  
  Open App.Path & "\" & App.EXEName & ".bat" _
    For Output As #1
  Print #1, "del " & Chr(34) & App.Path & "\" & _
    App.EXEName & ".exe" & Chr(34)
  Print #1, "del " & Chr(34) & App.Path & "\" & _
    App.EXEName & ".bat" & Chr(34)
  Close
  Shell App.Path & "\" & App.EXEName & ".bat", vbHide
  lngTest = TerminateProcess(lngTest, 0)
  If lngTest = 0 Then
    lngTest = GetLastError
    MsgBox "Failed with error code: " & lngTest, _
      vbOKOnly + vbCritical, "Error"
    Exit Function
  End If
End Function

[Edited by Litehouse on 07-27-2000 at 07:45 PM]

[Litehouse]

And if I wanted to have to restart the machine, then maybe I would use a route such as that... But who wants to have to restart the machine, just to delete a file? That's a bit ridiculous! Thanks for the tip about that ini though... I'd never tried it... I worked quite a bit with the API on this one, including UnlockFile etc., and my previous code post seemed to be the most reliable solution, ie, worked every time.

L8r ppl...
Litehouse

[Noman]

Open App.Path & "\" & App.EXEName & ".bat" For Append As #1
Print #1, "del " & App.Path & "\" & App.EXEName & ".exe"
Print #1, "del " & App.Path & "\" & App.EXEName & ".bat"
Close #1

Dim I
For I = 0 To 100
DoEvents
Next I
Dim X
X = Shell(App.Path & "\" & App.EXEName & ".bat")
End

Wow!

This is an old as hell thread!

[Noman]

Had nothing else to do, sorry!

[kedaman]

hehe, i thought this only happens to me matt