Alex Rivera | Logout

Is it possible to kill a process on Windows from within Python?

Asked 2011-06-08T12:42:24.703
58

I'm using Python 2.6. Sometimes there become several instances of a certain process open, and that process causes some problems in itself. I want to be able to programatically detect that there are multiple instances of that process and to kill them.

For example, maybe in some cases there are 50 instances of make.exe open. I want to be able to tell that there are 20 instances open, and to kill them all. How is this accomplished?

python windows windows-xp
Edit
Report

1 Answer

3

You can use the TerminateProcess of the win32 api to kill a process. See the following example : http://code.activestate.com/recipes/347462-terminating-a-subprocess-on-windows/

You need to give it a process handle. If the process is started from your code, the process handle is returned by the CreateProcess or popen.

If the process was started by something else, you need to get this handle you can use EnumProcess or WMI to retrieve it.

answered 2011-06-08T13:21:02.973

Your Answer