Must kill explorer

[Sneeden]

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!

[sunburnt]

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!

[Sneeden]

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.

// 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
				
}