Can I handle the killing of my windows process through the Task Manager?

Question

I have a windows C++ application (app.exe). When the app is closed, I need to perform some cleanup tasks specific to my application. What happens when this process (app.exe) is killed through the Task Manager. Assuming that the application is still responsive, can I somehow handle this situation in my app.exe?

I am looking for something similar to how kill <pid> in Linux will send the SIGTERM signal to the process indicated by pid. I could then register my own signal handler for SIGTERM and perform the cleanup.

Answer 1

There are two ways to kill application in Task Manager.

• Killing through Applications tab would roughly be equivalent of SIGTERM. Application may intercept it and do more processing, since it's basically sending a "close window" message. Message to catch is WM_CLOSE.
• Killing through Processes tab would roughly be equivalent of SIGKILL. There is nothing you can do to intercept that, short of monitoring user's actions in Task Manager's listbox and End Process button, or having a watchdog process that will see when the first one is killed.

Alternatively, design the application in a way that does not require cleanup, or in a way that it will perform cleanup at startup.