Question

I have two different way to check whether a process is still up and running:

1) using GetExitCodeProcess()
2) walking the list of processes using CreateToolhelp32Snapshot() and checking PIDs

now, in both cases I’m still getting that a process that I terminated with TerminateProcess is till alive even tho it is not.

Is there a way to positively know whether a process is still alive or dead passing the PID?
thanks!

Answer 1

A call to GetExitCodeProcess should return STILL_ACTIVE for active processes. After a call to TerminateProcess, the process will be dead, and a different value will be returned.

Another way to check if a process is alive is WaitForSingleObject. If you call this on the process handle with a timeout of 0, it will immediately return WAIT_TIMEOUT if the process is still running.