Differentiating between processes with the same name outside of my application?

Question

I am creating a WPF application in C# that will monitor the processes running on a machine. I want to be able to collect a list of currently running processes and compare them to a list of processes I want to run. If the process I want to run is not yet running, then my application will start it.

I am having a problem getting the processes by name because I have numerous processes running off of one parent application (they are all started with different executable parameters,) so they all have the same process name. I also can't use process ID because there is no way for me to know the PID of processes started outside of my application. I need some way to differentiate the processes from one another both started in and outside of my application so that I can tell if they are already running. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Welcome to StackOverflow! Can you include the code of your attempt so far? — kdbanman, Jul 21 '15 at 18:32
But you can read their command line: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/504208/how-to-read-command-line-arguments-of-another-process-in-c/504378%23504378 — Tigran, Jul 21 '15 at 18:32
`I have numerous processes running off of one parent application (they are all started with different executable parameters) so they all have the same process name.` is the parent application your own? Or is it a third-party application? — Matt Burland, Jul 21 '15 at 18:33
the parent application is a massive third party app. I am currently interning at a company so i am not allowed to post the code. I realize thats hard to work with but i was just wondering if i could differentiate between the processes by checking something other than the name. I will look into checking their command lines, thanks! — mbrem, Jul 21 '15 at 18:41

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:06

As suggested here, you can query the command-line parameters of a process with WMI, by doing the following, for example if you have the ProcessId:

var wmiQuery = string.Format("select CommandLine from Win32_Process where ProcessId='{0}'", processId);
var searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(wmiQuery);
var retObjectCollection = searcher.Get();
foreach (ManagementObject retObject in retObjectCollection)
    Console.WriteLine("[{0}]", retObject["CommandLine"]);

You can probably use a similar query to Win32_Process to find all the ProcessId with the same ProcessName.

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 21 '15 at 18:33

-1

Try by doing below to find all process in a local machine.

Process[] localAll = Process.GetProcesses();

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/1f3ys1f9(v=VS.110).aspx

answered Jul 21 '15 at 18:33

Abin

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Differentiating between processes with the same name outside of my application?

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