How to check if a process is running via a batch script

Question

How can I check if an application is running from a batch  well cmd  file   I need to not launch another instance if a program is already running   I can t change the app to make it single instance only    Also the application could be running as any user

User · Answer

Here s how I ve worked it out   tasklist  FI  IMAGENAME eq notepad exe   FO CSV  gt  search log  FOR  F   A IN  search log  DO IF    zA EQU 0 GOTO end  start notepad exe   end  del search log   The above will open Notepad if it is not already running   Edit  Note that this won t find applications hidden from the tasklist  This will include any scheduled tasks running as a different user  as these are automatically hidden

User · Answer

I usually execute following command in cmd prompt to check if my program exe is running or not   tasklist   grep program

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You should check the parent process name  see The Code Project article about a  NET based solution     A non-programmatic way to check    Launch Cmd exe Launch an application  for instance  c  windows notepad exe  Check properties of the Notepad exe process in Process nbsp Explorer  Check for parent process  This shows cmd exe    The same can be checked by getting the parent process name

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I like Chaosmaster s solution  But I looked for a solution which does not start another external program  like find exe or findstr exe   So I added the idea from Matt Lacey s solution  which creates an also avoidable temp file  At the end I could find a fairly simple solution  so I share it     SETLOCAL EnableExtensions set EXE myprog exe FOR  F   x IN   tasklist  NH  FI  IMAGENAME eq  EXE     DO IF   x     EXE  goto FOUND echo Not running goto FIN  FOUND echo Running  FIN   This is working for me nicely

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TrueY s answer seemed the most elegant solution  however  I had to do some messing around because I didn t understand what exactly was going on  Let me clear things up to hopefully save some time for the next person   TrueY s modified Answer     Change the name of notepad exe to the process  exe that you re trying to track   Process names are CASE SENSITIVE  so notepad exe works but Notepad exe does NOT   Do not change IMAGENAME   You can Copy and Paste this into an empty batch file and change the name of   notepad exe to the process you d like to track   Also  some large programs take a while to no longer show as not running  so   give this batch a few seconds timer to avoid a false result     echo off SETLOCAL EnableExtensions  set EXE notepad exe  FOR  F   x IN   tasklist  NH  FI  IMAGENAME eq  EXE     DO IF   x     EXE  goto ProcessFound  goto ProcessNotFound   ProcessFound  echo  EXE  is running goto END  ProcessNotFound echo  EXE  is not running goto END  END echo Finished    Anyway  I hope that helps  I know sometimes reading batch command-line can be kind of confusing sometimes if you re kind of a newbie  like me

User · Answer

Another possibility I came up with  inspired by using grep  is   tasklist  FI  IMAGENAME eq myapp exe  2 gt NUL   find  I  N  myapp exe  gt NUL if   ERRORLEVEL     0  echo Program is running   It doesn t need to save an extra file  so I prefer this method

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I use PV exe from http   www teamcti com pview prcview htm installed in Program Files PV with a batch file like this    echo off PATH  PATH   PROGRAMFILES  PV  PROGRAMFILES  YourProgram PV EXE YourProgram exe  gt nul if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto Process NotFound  Process Found echo YourProgram is running goto END  Process NotFound echo YourProgram is not running YourProgram exe goto END  END

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Under Windows you can use Windows Management Instrumentation  WMI  to ensure that no apps with the specified command line is launched  for example   wmic process where  name  nmake exe    get commandline   findstr  i  c   f load mak   c   f build mak   gt  NUL  amp  amp   echo THE BUILD HAS BEEN STARTED ALREADY   gt   ALREADY STARTED   amp  exit  b 1

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Building on vtrz s answer and Samuel Renkert s answer on an other topic  I came up with the following script that only runs  EXEC CMD  if it isn t already running    echo off set EXEC CMD  rsync exe  wmic process where  name  EXEC CMD   get commandline   findstr  i  EXEC CMD  gt  NUL if errorlevel 1        EXEC CMD        else        echo not starting  EXEC CMD   already running      As was said before  this requires administrative privileges

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The suggestion of npocmaka to use QPROCESS instead of TASKLIST is great but  its answer is so big and complex that I feel obligated to post a quite simplified version of it which  I guess  will solve the problem of most non-advanced users   QPROCESS  myprocess exe  gt NUL IF  ERRORLEVEL  EQU 0 ECHO  Process running    The code above was tested in Windows 7  with a user with administrator rigths

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I needed a solution with a retry  This code will run until the process is found and then kill it  You can set a timeout or anything if you like   Notes    The   exe  is mandatory You could make a file runnable with parameters  version below          Set programm you want to kill        Fileextension is mandatory     SET KillProg explorer exe         Set waiting time between 2 requests in seconds     SET  A   wait 3        ProcessNotFound         tasklist  NH  FI  IMAGENAME eq  KillProg     FIND  I   KillProg           IF   ERRORLEVEL     0                TASKKILL EXE  F  T  IM  KillProg            ELSE               timeout  t   wait              GOTO  ProcessNotFound             taskkill bat          Get program name from argumentlist     IF NOT    1                SET  KillProg   1        ELSE           ECHO Usage     nx0  ProgramToKill exe  amp  EXIT  B               Set waiting time between 2 requests in seconds     SET  A   wait 3        ProcessNotFound         tasklist  NH  FI  IMAGENAME eq  KillProg     FIND  I   KillProg           IF   ERRORLEVEL     0                TASKKILL EXE  F  T  IM  KillProg            ELSE               timeout  t   wait              GOTO  ProcessNotFound             Run with   taskkill bat ProgramToKill exe

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TASKLIST   FINDSTR ProgramName    START     Path ProgramName exe

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I like the WMIC and TASKLIST tools but they are not available in home basic editions of windows Another way is to use QPROCESS command available on almost every windows machine   for the ones that have terminal services - I think only win XP without SP2   so practialy every windows machine     echo off  check process setlocal if    1  equ    echo pass the process name as forst argument  amp  amp  exit  b 1    first argument is the process you want to check if running set process to check   1    QPROCESS can display only the first 12 symbols of the running process    If other tool is used the line bellow could be deleted set process to check  process to check  0 12   QPROCESS     find  i   process to check    gt nul 2 gt  amp 1  amp  amp        echo process  process to check   is running            echo process  process to check   is not running   endlocal   QPROCESS command is not so powerful as TASKLIST and is limited in showing only 12 symbols of process name but should be taken into consideration if TASKLIST is not available   More simple usage where it uses the name if the process as an argument  the  exe suffix is mandatory in this case where you pass the executable name     echo off  check process setlocal if    1  equ    echo pass the process name as forst argument  amp  amp  exit  b 1    first argument is the process you want to check if running     exe suffix is mandatory set  process to check   1    QPROCESS   process to check    gt nul 2 gt  amp 1  amp  amp        echo process  process to check   is running            echo process  process to check   is not running   endlocal   The difference between two ways of QPROCESS usage is that the QPROCESS   will list all processes while QPROCESS some exe will filter only the processes for the current user   Using WMI objects through windows script host exe instead of WMIC is also an option It should on run also on every windows machine  excluding the ones where the WSH is turned off but this is a rare case  Here bat file that lists all processes through WMI classes and can be used instead of QPROCESS in the script above  it is a jscript bat hybrid and should be saved as  bat     if   X     Y   end    JSCRIPT COMMENT       echo off cscript   E JScript   nologo    f0  exit  b                 end of JSCRIPT COMMENT       var winmgmts   GetObject  winmgmts        root  cimv2    var colProcess   winmgmts ExecQuery  Select   from Win32 Process    var processes    new Enumerator colProcess   for    processes atEnd   processes moveNext          var process processes item        WScript Echo  process processID           process Name        And a modification that will check if a process is running    if   X     Y   end    JSCRIPT COMMENT       echo off if    1  equ    echo pass the process name as forst argument  amp  amp  exit  b 1    first argument is the process you want to check if running set process to check   1  cscript   E JScript   nologo    f0    find  i   process to check    gt nul 2 gt  amp 1  amp  amp        echo process  process to check   is running            echo process  process to check   is not running    exit  b                 end of JSCRIPT COMMENT       var winmgmts   GetObject  winmgmts        root  cimv2    var colProcess   winmgmts ExecQuery  Select   from Win32 Process    var processes    new Enumerator colProcess   for    processes atEnd   processes moveNext          var process processes item        WScript Echo  process processID           process Name        The two options could be used on machines that have no TASKLIST    The ultimate technique is using MSHTA   This will run on every windows machine from XP and above and does not depend on windows script host settings  the call of MSHTA could reduce a little bit the performance though  again should be saved as bat     if   X     Y   end    JSCRIPT COMMENT     echo off  setlocal if    1  equ    echo pass the process name as forst argument  amp  amp  exit  b 1    first argument is the process you want to check if running  set process to check   1   mshta  about  lt script language  javascript  src  file     dpnxf0  gt  lt  script gt     find  i   process to check    gt nul 2 gt  amp 1  amp  amp        echo process  process to check   is running            echo process  process to check   is not running   endlocal exit  b                end of JSCRIPT COMMENT          var fso  new ActiveXObject  Scripting FileSystemObject   GetStandardStream 1        var winmgmts   GetObject  winmgmts        root  cimv2       var colProcess   winmgmts ExecQuery  Select   from Win32 Process       var processes    new Enumerator colProcess      for    processes atEnd   processes moveNext          var process processes item        fso Write  process processID           process Name     n            close

User · Answer

I used the script provided by Matt  2008-10-02   The only thing I had trouble with was that it wouldn t delete the search log file  I expect because I had to cd to another location to start my program  I cd d back to where the BAT file and search log are  but it still wouldn t delete  So I resolved that by deleting the search log file first instead of last   del search log  tasklist  FI  IMAGENAME eq myprog exe   FO CSV  gt  search log  FOR  F   A IN  search log  DO IF   -zA EQU 0 GOTO end  cd  C  Program Files MyLoc bin   myprog exe myuser mypwd   end

User · Answer

I use PV exe from http   www teamcti com pview prcview htm installed in Program Files PV with a batch file like this    echo off PATH  PATH   PROGRAMFILES  PV  PROGRAMFILES  YourProgram PV EXE YourProgram exe  gt nul if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto Process NotFound  Process Found echo YourProgram is running goto END  Process NotFound echo YourProgram is not running YourProgram exe goto END  END

User · Answer

I m assuming windows here   So  you ll need to use WMI to get that information   Check out The Scripting Guy s archives for a lot of examples on how to use WMI from a script

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Just mentioning  if your task name is really long then it won t appear in its entirety in the tasklist result  so it might be safer  other than localization  to check for the opposite   Variation of this answer      in case your task name is really long  check for the  opposite  and find  the message when it s not there tasklist  fi  imagename eq yourreallylongtasknamethatwontfitinthelist exe  2 gt NUL   find  I  N  no tasks are running  gt NUL if   errorlevel     0        echo Task Found   else       echo Not Found Task

User · Answer

The answer provided by Matt Lacey works for Windows XP  However  in Windows Server 2003 the line    tasklist  FI  IMAGENAME eq notepad exe   FO CSV  gt  search log   returns      INFO  No tasks are running which match the specified criteria    which is then read as the process is running   I don t have a heap of batch scripting experience  so my soulution is to then search for the process name in the search log file and pump the results into another file and search that for any output   tasklist  FI  IMAGENAME eq notepad exe   FO CSV  gt  search log  FINDSTR notepad exe search log  gt  found log  FOR  F   A IN  found log  DO IF    zA EQU 0 GOTO end  start notepad exe   end  del search log del found log   I hope this helps someone else

User · Answer

I don t know how to do so with built in CMD but if you have  grep you can try the following   tasklist  FI  IMAGENAME eq myApp exe    grep myApp exe if ERRORLEVEL 1 echo  myApp is not running

[windows] How to check if a process is running via a batch script

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