How to check if a program is running now or not by its title ? (using vb6)

Question

Example :

'check if there is a program contain a "Notepad" in its title

if (does "Notepad" running now ?) then 

end if

alt text

Tomalak · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-04T16:53:01.553

''# preparation (in a separate module)
Private Declare Function FindWindow Lib "user32.dll" Alias "FindWindowA" (ByVal lpClassName As String, ByVal lpWindowName As String) As Long

Public Function FindWindowHandle(Caption As String) As Long
  FindWindowHandle = FindWindow(vbNullString, Caption)
End Function

''# use (anywhere)
MsgBox FindWindowHandle("Untitled - Notepad")

Code above basically taken from here.

The exact window caption must be known for this. The function will return <> 0 if a window with the given caption was found, 0 otherwise.

To find a window whose caption contains a certain string, you will need to enumerate all windows and look for the correct one yourself. This process is a little more complicated, but explained in great detail here: everythingaccess.com - Bring an external application window to the foreground.

but I want to check if there is a program contain "Notepad" in its title because I don't know what is the document name(Untitled or anything else) — faressoft, Jan 03 '11 at 16:31
@faressoft: That's why I included the link to a blog post that explains how this can be done. — Tomalak, Jan 03 '11 at 16:37

MarkJ · Answer 2 · 2011-01-03T21:01:27.423

3

Karl Peterson has some great code for this on his excellent VB6 website. It uses EnumWindows like Tomalak's answer (in the link)

edited Jan 03 '11 at 21:01

answered Jan 03 '11 at 20:56

MarkJ

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 03 '11 at 19:26

Pass in the handle of your app and a partial caption. It will return true if found.

Public Function GetHandleFromPartialCaption(ByRef lWnd As Long, ByVal sCaption As String) As Boolean

Dim lhWndP            As Long
Dim sStr              As String

GetHandleFromPartialCaption = False
lhWndP = FindWindow(vbNullString, vbNullString)                                      'PARENT WINDOW

Do While lhWndP <> 0
    sStr = String(GetWindowTextLength(lhWndP) + 1, Chr$(0))
    GetWindowText lhWndP, sStr, Len(sStr)
    sStr = Left$(sStr, Len(sStr) - 1)
    If InStr(1, sStr, sCaption) > 0 Then
        GetHandleFromPartialCaption = True
        lWnd = lhWndP
        Exit Do
    End If
    lhWndP = GetWindow(lhWndP, GW_HWNDNEXT)
Loop

End Function

You should also include the WIN API function declarations. – Tomalak Jan 04 '11 at 16:52 — Tomalak, Jan 04 '11 at 16:52

score -3 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 05 '12 at 15:56

-3

Now right click on taskbar and click task manager. Now show your running program.

edited Mar 05 '12 at 15:56

Brian Mains

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answered Mar 05 '12 at 07:28

raja

11

How to check if a program is running now or not by its title ? (using vb6)

4 Answers4