Find and Kill Running Windows Processes in Java

One of my friends asked me if it is possible to check a programming is running or not in Windows using Java. And close it if it is running. After a little bit research, I found the Java solution for his requirement.

The key is Runtime.getRuntime().exec(), you can run commands available in this platform. In Windows, the "tasklist" command will show you all the processes running (In Linux, you might want to look at "ps").

tasklist

The result of this command looks like this:

Image Name             PID Session Name Session#    Mem Usage
========================== ===================== ============
System Idle Process      0 Services            0         24 K
System                   4 Services            0      1,260 K
svchost.exe            896 Services            0      7,060 K
taskmgr.exe            868 Console             2     13,300 K
WINWORD.EXE           5412 Console             2     39,860 K
iexplore.exe          5256 Console             2     69,104 K
eclipse.exe           1112 Console             2      1,788 K
javaw.exe             4380 Console             2    555,552 K
cmd.exe               1500 Console             2      3,264 K
conhost.exe           3120 Console             2      7,188 K
bash.exe              3360 Console             2      7,840 K
sh.exe                3412 Console             2      7,456 K
java.exe               824 Console             2    317,116 K
Acrobat.exe           5484 Console             2     49,784 K

Here is the code to iterate and find running process:

 private static final String TASKLIST = "tasklist";

 public static boolean isProcessRunging(String serviceName) throws Exception {

  Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(TASKLIST);
  BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
    p.getInputStream()));
  String line;
  while ((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {

   System.out.println(line);
   if (line.contains(serviceName)) {
    return true;
   }
  }

  return false;

 }

When you make sure the enemy process is runing, you can use "taskkill /IM xxx.exe" to kill it. For example, let's kill MS Word:

taskkill -IM WINWORD.EXE

Below is the code to kill process by name:

 private static final String KILL = "taskkill /IM ";
public static void killProcess(String serviceName) throws Exception {

  Runtime.getRuntime().exec(KILL + serviceName);

 }

Let's have a look how to use this process helper:

 public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {
  String processName = "WINWORD.EXE";
  
  //System.out.print(isProcessRunging(processName));

  if (isProcessRunging(processName)) {

   killProcess(processName);
  }
 }