Getting the Process ID

Bill_Thompson · January 26th, 2008, 09:05 PM

How do I find the Process ID of a program? I need to know it to attach a process for WinDbg. And, yes, I tried googling this question but everything seemed to be for a Linux system.

Bob Bedell · January 26th, 2008, 10:42 PM

Here's a couple chunks of code from a little remoting experiment I was running. TestServer runs on IIS in a remote process, and the client runs in a local process.

Code:

private void button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e) {
            System.Text.StringBuilder output = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
            TestServer.TestService test = new TestServer.TestService();

            output.AppendFormat("TestServer values\n");
            output.AppendFormat("Machine: {0}\n", test.GetServerName());
            output.AppendFormat("Process: {0}\n", test.GetProcessID());

            output.AppendFormat("\nClient values\n");
            output.AppendFormat("Machine: {0}\n", System.Environment.MachineName);
            output.AppendFormat("Process: {0}\n", System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess().Id);

            MessageBox.Show(output.ToString(), "TestClient");

        }

Code:

public class TestService : MarshalByRefObject
    {
        public TestService()    {}

        public string GetServerName() {
            return System.Environment.MachineName;
        }

        public int GetProcessID(){
            return System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess().Id;
        }             
    }

HTH,

Bob

Imar · January 28th, 2008, 02:22 AM

Hi Bill,

If you are able / willing to use C# 2008, you can use LINQ to get the IDs like this:

Code:

var processIds = from p in System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcesses()
                 where p.ProcessName.Contains("devenv")
                 select p.Id;

foreach (var processId in processIds)
{
    Debug.WriteLine(String.Format("Process Id {0}", processId.ToString()));
}

The example use the where clause to limit the processes by their name but other criteria are possible as well. This gives you an IEnumerable<int> that you can loop through as the code demonstrates.

Alternatively, and less cool (but works in C# 2005), use GetProcessesByName.

Code:

Process[] processes = System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessesByName("devenv");

Both methods could result in multiple processes / IDs being returned, so if your application allows multiple instances, you need to take care of that as somehow.

Imar
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joefawcett · January 28th, 2008, 04:05 AM

If you just want to know then you can open the task manager, Ctrl+Shift+Esc, and then choose the processes tab. If the PID column isn't there then choose View > Select columns and add it in. Alternatively open a command window and tyep tasklist and press enter.

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)