doeas anyone know how to get a list of active tasks into VB - I assume
there is an API call you can make since task manager (ctl-alt-del)
seems to be able to list running tasks. I need to be able to
interrogate the task list of a remote computer to monitor when/if an
app has died.

Cameron

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Before you buy.

Have a look at the 'CreateToolhelp32Snapshot' API.  It is included in Win95
API and later, and NT "5" and later.  You can enumerate the running
processes on the system.  Next use 'Process32Next' and 'Process32First' api
calls to go through each of the items in the process list.  They have a
pointer to the processentry32 structure which is initialized with the
process info ie. name, path, exe etc.

Check out the MSDN article:
 HOWTO: List Running Processes
Article ID: Q187913

-Hiram

Fantastic pointer in the right direction, would it be pushing
friendship to ask if you know a way to list the processes on a remote
machine ID (assuming I had administrator access - which I do)?

Cameron

I don't know of a straight forward way of getting the process of a remote
machine.  Using the CreateToolhelp32Snapshot and DCOM you may be able to
create an ActiveX exe that would install on the remote machine, then your
machine may be able to 'poll' the remote machine. The ActiveX exe can check
the remote machine processes and send info back to the calling component on
your machine on whether the process was detected.  I have only used DCOM
technology once experimentally and it was very frustrating to get it working
properly.  As I recall, if you want to activate DCOM exes on different
remote machines you may have to run separate installs instead of one, as
each install will 'link'  via the GUID to another distributed component
residing on various remote machines.  I may be wrong about this, but that is
how I did it.

Can you use other methods of detection?  Say if this is a custom exe you are
checking, have it write something to a temp folder upon executing and
removal on exiting, so you may check for this file signature, or write a
monitoring exe on the remote sys that could notify or create a signature if
the process is discovered?

-Hiram