Application process will not close

Question

I have a WPF application, after closing the app its process app.exe *32 is still running in the processes list in task manager.

I need this to close as when I make an edit to my code I get the following error -

Unable to copy file "obj\x86\Release\frontEndTest.exe" to "bin\Release\app.exe". The process cannot access the file 'bin\Release\app.exe' because it is being used by another process.

I am aware that this sort of question has been asked before here.

However the solution did not work for me by changing my Assembly.cs to -

[assembly: AssemblyVersion("2.0.0")]
[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("2.0.0")]

I thought that perhaps if I were to find the Window closed event and puttting something like - Process.GetCurrentProcess().Kill(); in the event so that when a user closed the application from the red 'x' button in the top right of the form this would perhaps kill the process?

Answer 1

So your process is still alive after you've shut it down. This usually means you have a thread that keeps it alive. Here's how you can track it down.

First, attach to it in the debugger:

                               

                                       

Now open the threads list:

       

Double-click each thread you see here:

And you'll be taken to what the thread is currently doing:

                               

That, right there, is what preventing the app from shutting down. One would have to exit that loop for the app to exit (or, alternatively, set Thread.IsBackground to true).