How Can I Delete All the Duplicates in a Set of Processes But Keep the Oldest Process?

  This blog corresponds to the scripting guy column with the same title.   I am posting the script for doing the same with PowerShell

    1: $processes = get-wmiobject -query "Select * from win32_process where name = 'notepad.exe'"

    2:  

    3: if ($processes.count -le  2 )

    4: {

    5:   return

    6: }

    7:  

    8: $datetarget = [DateTime]::Now

    9:  

   10: foreach ($process in  $processes)

   11: {

   12:    $dateholder =  $process.CreationDate

   13:    $dateholder =  $process.ConvertToDateTime($dateholder)

   14:  

   15:    if ( $dateholder -le  $datetarget)

   16:    {

   17:     $processid =   $process.ProcessID

   18:         $datetarget  =  $dateholder

   19:    }

   20:  

   21: }

   22:  

   23:  

   24: $processes = get-wmiobject -query " select * from win32_process where name='notepad.exe' AND processID <> $processid"

   25:  

   26: foreach ($process in $processes)

   27: {

   28:    $process.Terminate()

   29: }

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 09, 2007
  Or, as a one-liner:Get-WmiObject -query "Select * from Win32_Process where name = 'notepad.exe'" | sort CreationDate -Descending | Tee-Object -Variable procs | where { $.CreationDate -gt ($procs[$procs.Count - 1]).CreationDate } | foreach { $.Terminate() }
• Anonymous
  May 11, 2007
  if ($processes.count -le  2 )should beif ($processes.count -lt  2 )Otherwise a pair of processes will be ignored.