Question

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Track started applications in Windows

I’ like to create a program or service in C# which monitors when a user launches a certain application like excel or access. With System.Diagnostics.Process I can get the running processes but I want to monitor the event when a user launches the application. We’d like to create some sort of usage history.

Answer 1

I did a small example using WqlEventQuery object to check if there is a new instance of a process. Afterwards check for the name and do as you want. If you want to improve my query – feel free to have a look at the according syntax description.

private static void lookForExcel()
{
    WqlEventQuery query = new WqlEventQuery("__InstanceCreationEvent", new TimeSpan(0, 0, 1), "TargetInstance isa \"Win32_Process\"");
    ManagementEventWatcher watcher = new ManagementEventWatcher(query);
    watcher.EventArrived += new EventArrivedEventHandler(watcher_EventArrived);
    watcher.Start();
    Console.ReadLine();
    watcher.Stop();
}

static void watcher_EventArrived(object sender, EventArrivedEventArgs e)
{
    string instanceName = ((ManagementBaseObject)e.NewEvent["TargetInstance"])["Name"].ToString();
    if (instanceName.ToLower()=="excel.exe")
    {
        Debug.WriteLine("Excel has been started ...");    
    }            
}