api TerminateProcess

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  19 years ago

  by Byornski

  Byornski

  , United States

  Joined 51 years ago

  how does the TerminateProcess api call work and how could i use it to kill a program by its exe name?
  This is what the apim viewer says about it:
  

  
  Public Declare Function TerminateProcess Lib "kernel32" Alias "TerminateProcess" (ByVal hProcess As Long, ByVal uExitCode As Long) As Long
  

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  19 years ago

  by James Crowley

  James Crowley

  London, United Kingdom

  Joined 20 years ago

  In order to use TerminateProcess you need the process handle. The exit code is sets the exit code of the application that you are terminating (in rather a drastic way!).
  

  
  Below is what the MSDN library has to say...
  

  
  Parameters
  

  
  hProcess
  [in] Handle to the process to terminate.
  Windows NT/2000: The handle must have PROCESS_TERMINATE access. For more information, see Process Security and Access Rights.
  

  
  uExitCode
  [in] Specifies the exit code for the process and for all threads terminated as a result of this call. Use the GetExitCodeProcess function to retrieve the process's exit value. Use the GetExitCodeThread function to retrieve a thread's exit value.
  

  
  Return Values
  

  
  If the function succeeds, the return value is nonzero.
  

  
  If the function fails, the return value is zero. To get extended error information, call GetLastError.
  

  
  Remarks
  The TerminateProcess function is used to unconditionally cause a process to exit. Use it only in extreme circumstances. The state of global data maintained by dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) may be compromised if TerminateProcess is used rather than ExitProcess.
  

  
  TerminateProcess causes all threads within a process to terminate, and causes a process to exit, but DLLs attached to the process are not notified that the process is terminating.
  

  
  Terminating a process causes the following:
  

  
  All of the object handles opened by the process are closed.
  All of the threads in the process terminate their execution.
  The state of the process object becomes signaled, satisfying any threads that had been waiting for the process to terminate.
  The states of all threads of the process become signaled, satisfying any threads that had been waiting for the threads to terminate.
  The termination status of the process changes from STILL_ACTIVE to the exit value of the process.
  Terminating a process does not cause child processes to be terminated.
  

  
  Terminating a process does not necessarily remove the process object from the system. A process object is deleted when the last handle to the process is closed.
  

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