Question

I’m creating a setup project using Visual Studio 2008 and I was wondering if there is a standard way to check if a certain program is running during the setup? In this case I want to check for any instances of Microsoft Excel.

thanks in advance!

Answer 1

To do this during setup you will likely have to define a custom action. A custom action is an install step which allows you to run arbitrary code. It’s too big of a topic to cover in a SO post, but the following article will help you get started on custom actions

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d9k65z2d(VS.80).aspx

In this action you could use the process class to determine if a particular process is running.

public static bool IsExcelRunning() {
  return Process.GetProcesses().Where(x => x.ProcessName == "excel");
}

Can’t remember off the top of my head if it’s excel or msexcel but you can adjust appropriately ;).