Skip to content

Monitor a win32 app via a tray icon, so it can be terminated if it locks up

Notifications You must be signed in to change notification settings

adam-nielsen/killapp

Folders and files

NameName
Last commit message
Last commit date

Latest commit

 

History

3 Commits
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Repository files navigation

Killapp: Monitor a Windows program via a tray icon, and provide a
right-click menu to forcefully terminate it.

Copyright 2010 Adam Nielsen <adam.nielsen@uq.edu.au>
http://github.com/adam-nielsen/killapp

Purpose
-------
This utility monitors a process (a running .exe file) and allows it to be
easily terminated via a right-click menu in the system tray.  When the
application is terminated it is done so forcefully, in the same way as choosing
"End Task" in Task Manager, only the user does not require access to run the
Task Manager application.

It is intended for use in remote-access situations (such has Citrix) where
end-users typically do not have enough access to forcefully terminate
applications themselves.

Because of this, the application does not hang around to keep the session open.
If the process to monitor cannot be found within 10 seconds it will silently
exit, and it will automatically exit once the process terminates normally.

Usage
-----

Both the application to monitor and the icon to use in the tray must be
specified:

  killapp \target.exe trayicon.ico

This will wait for up to 10 seconds for target.exe to be loaded, and will use
trayicon.ico as the system tray icon.

"target.exe" is matched against the end of the full process path, so you can
include partial path matches in the event that there are multiple processes
with the same .exe name.  An example is folder\test.exe.  Avoid using
"test.exe" with no path at all, as this will match both "mytest.exe" and
"yourtest.exe" and so may result in an unexpected application being terminated.
Instead use "\test.exe" as this will match only test.exe loaded from any path.

Note that you cannot use drive letters as the full name being matched is of
the Windows kernel form:

  \Device\HarddiskVolume1\WINDOWS\explorer.exe

License
-------

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

About

Monitor a win32 app via a tray icon, so it can be terminated if it locks up

Resources

Stars

Watchers

Forks

Packages

No packages published