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.