What API to grab windows process status?

Question

I need to write a small application to monitor the status of a Windows process using Delphi or C++. A call that will show me Process Status, particularly when the status is 'not responding'.

What windows API must I use to accomplish this?

What I want is essentially what you can see in Task Manager - Status :

I have not tried anything yet, since I don't know what API to use.

(My old profile 'Vector' is lost - I am not really a newbe. Experienced programmer and Stack Overflow participant.)

Answer 1

The API's you want are:

• GetProcessMemoryInfo
• GetProcessTimes

You can also see a helpful MSDN article:

Collecting Memory Usage Information For a Process ^archive

To determine the efficiency of your application, you may want to examine its memory usage. The following sample code uses the GetProcessMemoryInfo function to obtain information about the memory usage of a process.

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <psapi.h>

// To ensure correct resolution of symbols, add Psapi.lib to TARGETLIBS
// and compile with -DPSAPI_VERSION=1

void PrintMemoryInfo( DWORD processID )
{
    HANDLE hProcess;
    PROCESS_MEMORY_COUNTERS pmc;

    // Print the process identifier.

    printf( "\nProcess ID: %u\n", processID );

    // Print information about the memory usage of the process.

    hProcess = OpenProcess(  PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION |
                                    PROCESS_VM_READ,
                                    FALSE, processID );
    if (NULL == hProcess)
        return;

    if ( GetProcessMemoryInfo( hProcess, &pmc, sizeof(pmc)) )
    {
        printf( "\tPageFaultCount: 0x%08X\n", pmc.PageFaultCount );
        printf( "\tPeakWorkingSetSize: 0x%08X\n", 
                  pmc.PeakWorkingSetSize );
        printf( "\tWorkingSetSize: 0x%08X\n", pmc.WorkingSetSize );
        printf( "\tQuotaPeakPagedPoolUsage: 0x%08X\n", 
                  pmc.QuotaPeakPagedPoolUsage );
        printf( "\tQuotaPagedPoolUsage: 0x%08X\n", 
                  pmc.QuotaPagedPoolUsage );
        printf( "\tQuotaPeakNonPagedPoolUsage: 0x%08X\n", 
                  pmc.QuotaPeakNonPagedPoolUsage );
        printf( "\tQuotaNonPagedPoolUsage: 0x%08X\n", 
                  pmc.QuotaNonPagedPoolUsage );
        printf( "\tPagefileUsage: 0x%08X\n", pmc.PagefileUsage ); 
        printf( "\tPeakPagefileUsage: 0x%08X\n", 
                  pmc.PeakPagefileUsage );
    }

    CloseHandle( hProcess );
}

And their example procedure that uses it to enumerate all processes:

int main( void )
{
    // Get the list of process identifiers.

    DWORD aProcesses[1024], cbNeeded, cProcesses;
    unsigned int i;

    if ( !EnumProcesses( aProcesses, sizeof(aProcesses), &cbNeeded ) )
    {
        return 1;
    }

    // Calculate how many process identifiers were returned.

    cProcesses = cbNeeded / sizeof(DWORD);

    // Print the memory usage for each process

    for ( i = 0; i < cProcesses; i++ )
    {
        PrintMemoryInfo( aProcesses[i] );
    }

    return 0;
}