Killing .exe's

[zabimaru]

Hello friends, let's say from my program, A, I want to kill another program, B. Does the kill function from A work if B is running?
Also if not then is there any way in which I can unload/exit B from my program A and kill it? Thanks for all the help!

[Hack]

By kill it you simply mean stopping it from running right?

Or, are you asking how to delete it altogether?

[RobDog888]

Why do you need one program to "killl" the other?

[zabimaru]

I want to stop the other program from running and delete it. Is it possible?

[Hack]

What is this other program?

Does it belong to you?

[zabimaru]

Yes it does belong to me.

[Hack]

Does it have a static window caption?

[zabimaru]

What is a static window caption? Do you mean is it shown on the window task bar?

If so, yes it's shown in the windows task manager and the task bar.

[Hack]

I'm referring to the text in its own caption bar, at the top of the form.

And, by static, I mean does it remain constant, or does it, under certain, circumstances, change?

I ask these questions because to close it, you can use the FindWindow API which would require its caption. That would give you the window handle.

Once you had the Window handle, you can pass it a shutdown message.

[Hack]

Here is an example:

Private Declare Function FindWindow Lib "user32" Alias "FindWindowA" _
(ByVal lpClassName As String, ByVal lpWindowName As String) As Long
 
Private Declare Function PostMessage Lib "user32" Alias "PostMessageA" _
(ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal wMsg As Long, ByVal wParam As Long, _
ByVal lParam As Long) As Long
 
Private Const WM_CLOSE = &H10
 
Private Sub cmdCloseApp_Click()
Dim lngCloseIt As Long
lngCloseIt = FindWindow(vbNullString, "Caption Of Window To Be Closed")
PostMessage lngCloseIt, WM_CLOSE, CLng(0), CLng(0)
End Sub

[RobDog888]

You should also check if its a parent window because if its not then it wont close the app.

[cjnewbs]

Is it possible to kill a process without using the window caption, or would I have to use an API to discover all the open apps, and select the one to kill. This would be useful for me, so that I can close firefox, but have all the tabs still there when I re-open it.

[RobDog888]

Yes, you can do it by the process name instead. Search the forums for Terminate Process.

[Moneybucks]

See this post, it contains some information on TerminateProcess API:

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=464389