Must kill explorer

I need to kill explorer. My approch is to kill the process. The problem is that I need the processID, or Handle to kill. What I need is a way to retrieve that handle or processID. Does anyone have a function they could post or if there is a better approach let me know. Need ASAP.

Help!

Check out the code posted in this thread:
http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=249578

Which will kill a process given it's file name ("explorer.exe").

Hope this helps!

Hey, thx a lot. That totally worked with a little tweaking for my application. Awsome! Here is the code in case anyone else is looking. The includes and such may be in the wrong order.... I pasted from my header files.

Code:

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// the purpose of this project is to kill a process by it's name



#using <mscorlib.dll>
#include <iostream>
#include <tchar.h>

#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
#include <windows.h>
#include <tchar.h>
#include <psapi.h>
#pragma comment (lib, "psapi")

#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
#include <windows.h>
#include <tchar.h>
#include <psapi.h>
#pragma comment (lib, "psapi")

using namespace System;
using namespace std;


DWORD GetProcessIdFromName(LPCTSTR lpszName, BOOL bCaseSensitive);
BOOL  KillProcess(DWORD dwProcessId, DWORD dwExitCode);
BOOL  CloseProcess(DWORD dwProcessId);


DWORD GetProcessIdFromName(LPCTSTR lpszName, BOOL bCaseSensitive);
BOOL  KillProcess(DWORD dwProcessId, DWORD dwExitCode);
BOOL  CloseProcess(DWORD dwProcessId);

int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])
{
        if(argc == 1)
        {
                cout << "Usage: KillProcess FullyQualifiedProcessName\n";
        }

        // while an instance of the process is running
        while(DWORD dwProc = GetProcessIdFromName(_T(argv[1]), FALSE))
        {
                // destroy!
                KillProcess(dwProc, 0);
                return 0;
        }

        cout << "Process could not be killed/n"
                << "Perhaps it is not running, or the fully qualified was not specified\n";

        return 1;
}

// This kills a process given its process ID.
BOOL KillProcess(DWORD dwProcessId, DWORD dwExitCode)
{
        // open process with rights to terminate
        // opening a process means
        // obtaining a local process handle
        // given the ID.
        HANDLE hProc = OpenProcess(PROCESS_TERMINATE , FALSE, dwProcessId);

        // if opening succeeded
        if (hProc)
        {
                // try to kill it
                if (TerminateProcess(hProc, dwExitCode))
                {
                        CloseHandle(hProc);
                        return TRUE;
                }
                CloseHandle(hProc);
        }

        // either OpenProcess or TerminateProcess failed.
        return FALSE;
}

#define IDCOUNT 512

// this gets the process ID for a given filename
DWORD GetProcessIdFromName(LPCTSTR lpszName, BOOL bCaseSensitive)
{
        DWORD dwBytes;                // number of bytes returned
        DWORD dwIDs[IDCOUNT];        // Process IDs.
        DWORD dwCount;                // number of IDs returned

        if (EnumProcesses(dwIDs, sizeof(dwIDs), &dwBytes))
        {
                dwCount = dwBytes / sizeof(DWORD);
                for(DWORD i = 0; i < dwCount; i++)
                {
                        // open process
                        // this will fail on some system processes
                        //like the Idle Process

                        // again: convert ID to handle
                        HANDLE hProcess = OpenProcess(PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION |
                                        PROCESS_VM_READ, FALSE,
                                        dwIDs[i]);

                        if (hProcess)
                        {
                                // A buffer for the filename.
                                TCHAR szProcessName[MAX_PATH];
                                HMODULE hModule;

                                // Get the various files loaded by the process.
                                if (EnumProcessModules(hProcess, &hModule,
                                                sizeof(hModule), &dwBytes))
                                {
                                        int cmp;
                                        // get the fully qualified name of the file
                                        GetModuleFileNameEx(hProcess, hModule,
                                                        szProcessName,
                                                        MAX_PATH);

                                        // compare it to the wanted name
                                        if (bCaseSensitive)
                                                cmp = _tcscmp(szProcessName, lpszName);
                                        else
                                                cmp = _tcsicmp(szProcessName, lpszName);
                                       
                                        // if they are equal, return the ID of this process
                                        if (cmp == 0)
                                        {
                                                CloseHandle(hProcess);
                                                return dwIDs[i];
                                        }
                                }

                                CloseHandle(hProcess);
                        }

                }
        }

        // didn't find the process, or something went wrong.
        return 0;        // IDs are not pointers, so no sense in returning the pointer
                               
}

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