c - How to kill processes by name? (Win32 API)

Question

Basically, I have a program which will be launched more than once. So, there will be two or more processes launched of the program.

I want to use the Win32 API and kill/terminate all the processes with a specific name.

I have seen examples of killing A process, but not multiple processes with the exact same name(but different parameters).

Answer 1

Try below code, killProcessByName() will kill any process with name filename :

#include <windows.h>
#include <process.h>
#include <Tlhelp32.h>
#include <winbase.h>
#include <string.h>
void killProcessByName(const char *filename)
{
    HANDLE hSnapShot = CreateToolhelp32Snapshot(TH32CS_SNAPALL, NULL);
    PROCESSENTRY32 pEntry;
    pEntry.dwSize = sizeof (pEntry);
    BOOL hRes = Process32First(hSnapShot, &pEntry);
    while (hRes)
    {
        if (strcmp(pEntry.szExeFile, filename) == 0)
        {
            HANDLE hProcess = OpenProcess(PROCESS_TERMINATE, 0,
                                          (DWORD) pEntry.th32ProcessID);
            if (hProcess != NULL)
            {
                TerminateProcess(hProcess, 9);
                CloseHandle(hProcess);
            }
        }
        hRes = Process32Next(hSnapShot, &pEntry);
    }
    CloseHandle(hSnapShot);
}
int main()
{
    killProcessByName("notepad++.exe");
    return 0;
}

Note: The code is case sensitive to filename, you can edit it for case insensitive.