"Managing Processes and Shell API Functionality using .NET"

Managing Processes and Shell API Functionality using .NET, Part 1

"Managing a process in older versions of Visual Basic was a tedious thing. In order to achieve results, you had to write a series of steps, a lengthy series of API calls which would help in getting information about the processes running on your system, in managing processes etc. With the advent of the .NET technology, this work became easier. In .NET, you have to import the System.Diagnostics namespace. This namespace allows you to interact with system processes, event logs, and performance counters.

This article gives you a brief introduction of how the Windows OS handles processes, methods, definitions, and also explains the way it reacts with .NET. A second article will show you how to work with the Process class, and get memory and thread information about running processes.

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Introduction

This is the first article in a series of two. The purpose of this article is to provide an introduction to the basic concepts of processes, and to explore the Process class in .NET. The first part explores the basic explanation about the functionalities of a process in such a way that they could be useful for managing application processes on your computer, either in a local or remote machine. The next article will show the usage of processes, and their various functionalities used through the .NET technology. Also, it will show you how to develop a simple program that will use the Process class, memory, and thread information about the running processes. ..."



All to often I find myself trying to figure out where the information that MS shows us in their apps comes from and how I can get at it programmatically.



This is a cool CodeProject posting that does just that for Task Manager. It examines the Processes tab of Task Manager, talking about most its  information/columns and features.



Then it talks about how you can get that same information in .Net by using the System.Diagnostics and System.Diagnostics.Process namesspaces.



Nice... It helps me respond to questions like, "Can’t you just do XYZ if Task Manager says the app is..."



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