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I’m wondering if it’s possible to use Javascript in a web browser (most likely IE) to retrieve a list of currently running processes?
I’m not trying to start any processes or close them or anything like that. Just a list that I can check through then say for example do something else if a certain process is running.
No, you cannot get any information about OS processes from browser-based javascript running at normal privileges.
The browser javascript environment is very carefully protected and isolated from your system for privacy and security reasons. If one could do what you were just asking for then any web page on the internet could see exactly what programs you were running and could send that info back to their own servers.
If you are willing to loosen up your security settings, some versions of IE contain some ability to access OS information (see here for an example), but you should realize that if you do loosen up your security settings, then unknown web pages may be able to access this info or take actions in your OS also. Other browsers don’t even contain this capability for regular web pages. With only one browser supporting this and only when security restrictions are relaxed, this is not a general purpose browser capability in any way.