true but it depends on your application and requirements in future. who knows what could be implemented at startup.

is it an acceptable method amoungst real programmers? Real programmers would let industry standard installers/clickonce handle it for them. thats why they were also developed in the first place :-)

but yes, this generally is what happens even using those installers. but to be honest, usually you would have to try and find an exposed entry point to allow "trusted" software to gain access so it can correctly shutdown the app, instead of killing the app so the whole logic and workflow of shutting down an app properly is executed (could be saving files or whatever)

maybe something to look for....

take a look at something like Thread signaling between applications