How to detect via Java whether a particular process is running under Windows?

Question

Well the title pretty much sums the question. The only thing I found is this but I'm not sure if thats the way to go.

Answer 1

You can use the wmic utility to check the list of running processes.
Suppose you want to check if the windows' explorer.exe process is running :

String line;
try {
    Process proc = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("wmic.exe");
    BufferedReader input = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(proc.getInputStream()));
    OutputStreamWriter oStream = new OutputStreamWriter(proc.getOutputStream());
    oStream .write("process where name='explorer.exe'");
    oStream .flush();
    oStream .close();
    while ((line = input.readLine()) != null) {
        System.out.println(line);
    }
    input.close();
} catch (IOException ioe) {
    ioe.printStackTrace();
}

See http://ss64.com/nt/wmic.html or http://support.microsoft.com/servicedesks/webcasts/wc072402/listofsampleusage.asp for some example of what you can get from wmic...