I have been searching all day to find a solution to this problem.
I have 2 Excel instances (2 times launched) and in one a batch process is running to create a pdf file. If I use ShellExecute to start the conversion then the focus is not switched to the called application and the user can continue in the other excel application without interuptions.
There is altough a problem, the ShellExecute does not wait and so this is runing square. I tryed with ShellExecuteEx with the nescessary options set but this steals the focus anyhow. So my only chance is ShellExecute but I should be able to get the id of the process created so I can wait until ended. A long explaination but I found it nescessary. Who can help me here ?
Related
using delphi XE I am trying to execute an exe file multiple times with different parameters
but i will need to close/restart each one separately for various reasons.
so i thought if i start that example.exe and get its pid
i will be able to kill it later using that unique pid value.
see if i simply execute the example.exe THEN try to get the PID of that process using process name or the process file path it will end up giving me wrong result because there are like 4 processes with that name.
any suggestions or ideas ?
my question might seem similar to some others but i need to return the pid value so keep that in mind
Use the Win32 API CreateProcess() function. It outputs a PROCESS_INFORMATION struct that contains the IDs and handles of the launched process and its main thread. You can use the process handle to wait for the process to exit.
To terminate the process, you can pass the process handle to TerminateProcess().
Or, you can be more civil and:
enumerate the process's UI windows using EnumWindows() or EnumThreadWindows(), posting a WM_CLOSE message to each one.
And/Or:
post a WM_QUIT message to the main thread.
If that does not work, then use TerminateProcess() as a last resort.
Look into using CreateProcess. There are multiple examples on StackOverflow including: Hide process window with 'CreateProcess'
If the call is successful, you will have the handle of the Process in the TProcessInformation parameter which you pass into CreateProcess.
I am using julius speech recognition for my application. I have one doubt regarding julius:
I have downloaded the latest version and was successful in using its lib and making it work. the problem I am facing is..once the app starts and I call the voice recognition function in my application...it takes the input from mic and displays whatever is said in the mic, but the function still continues to do so again and again. The control will never come out of that function. Here I am facing problem since the control is not returning back I am not able to proceed further. What I want is once the engine gets input from mic it should recognize and stop there.. which I tried to do by deleting the callback function but was unsuccessful.
Can anyone please guide me in this matter, what I need to do to get the desired output. It will be helpful for me.
As discussed in the same post on VoxForge:
You have a couple of choices: first to use the Julius -input control to get the sound data from a list of files (see the .jconf sample file), so that when the list (even if only length one) is exhausted then Julius stops. It is quite easy to record the voice input to a file and then feed the file into Julius. Second you can put a dialog manager in control. If you need more information on what a dialog manager does there are many posts on this forum on that subject accessible by a search.
The basic function of Julius is to start up and then keep on decoding input. When you get more experience you can run Julius as a server, and then tell the server to respond, not respond or shut down as required. It's more efficient than having Julius start and stop all the time.
When an avenue exists for a complex application to yield the required result by using an effective combination of options at run time, editing the application, while possible, might involve a lot of unnecessary work. The emphasis then shifts to passing the options correctly in whatever script is being used to access Julius.
I'm trying to write a program to ask me to input some information periodically, so I've written a service in C to run in the background, I can watch it reporting its okay by refreshing its log file. Now I'm stuck on how to get it to open up cmd and ask for the information.
I'd like to save this information to a log file. (I'm planning on monitoring my sleeping habits)
I tried using system("getinput.exe") and that seems to do nothing, I know using system() is bad but it was a first step.
CreateProcess() I simply cannot get to work, the example on MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682512.aspx doesn't work for me, i just get CreateProcess failed (2) whenever i try createprocess.exe dir for example.
Surely there must be a way?
EDIT: Thanks for the replies I will try to take a different approach then. Where would I start with writing a background application that can occasionally ask for user input in C?
im coding a program that starts an command prompt boot application ,at run time of the boot application,the boot application asks many questions like for eg.press 1 to read or 2 to write.but always i'll be reading from the app.i always want to pass 2 to it.but the issue is how should i know that the back ground boot application has asked me a question and that i should reply with appropriate answer dynamically?
If the program reads the input from the standard input then you can create a text file containing your input:
2
Then redirect the standard input to that file:
myapp.exe < inputfile.txt
Perhaps the program has command line options that would also allow you to avoid being prompted.
Note that your question is ambigous. If you are choosing the option to read, shouldn't you input 1?
I found a post about how to kill the program itself one year ago. It suggested writing some values in registry or windows directory or a location in disk when it runs first time. When it tries to run for the second time, the program just check the value in that location, if not match, it terminates itself.
This is simple and a little naive as any realtime anti-virus application would easily watch what value and where your program wrote in a disk. And in a true sense, that method did not 'kill' itself, the program just lies thare and sleeps intact and complete, only because of lack of trigger.
Is there a method that, in true meaning, kills itself such as deleting itself permanently, disemboweling itself, disrupting classes or functions or fragmenting itself?
Thank you.
+1 to this question.
It is so unfortunate that people often tend to vote down, if somebody asks questions that are related to tricky ways of doing things! Nothing illegal but at times this qustion may sound to other people that this method is unnecessary. But there are situations where one wants to delete itself (self) once it is executed.
To be clear - it is possible to delete the same exe once it is executed.
(1) As indicated in the earlier answer, it is not possible for an exe to get deleted once it is executed from disk. Because OS simply doesn't allow that.
(2) However, at this point, to achieve this, what we need to do is, just execute the EXE in momory! It is pretty easy and the same EXE could be easily deleted from disk once it is executed in memory.
read more on this unconventional technique here:
execute exe in memory
Please follow above post and see how you can execute an exe in momory stream; or you can even google it and find out yet another way. There are numerous examples that shows how to execute an exe in memory. Once it is executed, you can safely delete it from disk.
Hope this throws some light into your question.
An application cannot delete itself off the disk directly, because while the application is running the disk file is 'open' - hence it cannot be deleted.
See if MoveFileEx with the MOVEFILE_DELAY_UNTIL_REBOOT fits your requirement.
If you can't wait for a reboot, you'll have to write a second application (or batch file) that runs when the first application closes to wait for the first application to complete closing and then delete it.
It's chicken and egg though - how do you delete the second application/batch file? It can't delete itself. But you could put it in the %temp% directory and then use MoveFileEx() to delete it next time the machine is rebooted.