Monitor child processes of a process

Question

I'm running .exe file using this code:

Process proc = Process.Start("c:\program.exe"); proc.WaitForExit(); 

If I start Stopwatch before starting the process and stop it after proc.WaitForExit(); line, I can get the time that user was using that particular program.

The problem I'm facing is that some programs (and games) use launchers - some small .exe file that usually checks something and then launches another .exe file that is actually the program/game that the user wants to run. In these cases the code above doesn't work because it returns after launcher exists.

How can I track all processes that proc runs, and wait unitl all of them are terminated?

Answer 1

Here is the solution that the asker found:

public static class ProcessExtensions {     public static IEnumerable<Process> GetChildProcesses(this Process process)     {         List<Process> children = new List<Process>();         ManagementObjectSearcher mos = new ManagementObjectSearcher(String.Format("Select * From Win32_Process Where ParentProcessID={0}", process.Id));          foreach (ManagementObject mo in mos.Get())         {             children.Add(Process.GetProcessById(Convert.ToInt32(mo["ProcessID"])));         }          return children;     } } 

Answer 2

Take a look at this - Find all child processes of my own .NET process / find out if a given process is a child of my own? or http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/d60f0793-cc92-48fb-b867-dd113dabcd5c/how-to-find-the-child-processes-associated-with-a-pid. They provide ways to find child processes by a parent PID (which you have).

You can write monitor the process you create and also get its children. You could then track everything, and wait for them all to finish. I say "try" because I'm not sure you could catch very rapid changes (a process starting others and then dying before you get his children).