Introduction to Monitoring and Managing Windows Processes
You can use the Process component to accomplish most Windows process management tasks quickly and easily. You can use this component to work with processes on either local or remote computers. On a local computer, you can start and stop a process and also query it for specific types of information, including the names of the modules it has loaded, the time it was started, the number of handles it is consuming, and the set of its threads. On a remote computer, you cannot start or stop a process, but you can query existing processes for information.
To work with processes in your classes, you add an instance of the Process component to the class. This enables your class to access processes on the servers in your enterprise, and also to start and stop new processes. Other components in your application can call the Process component if it is necessary for them to start a new process or manipulate an existing process.
The PerformanceCounter and EventLog components may be better suited for monitoring the system performance. For more information, see Monitoring Performance Thresholds and Logging Application, Server, and Security Events.
Restrictions
Security issues require you to have sufficient access rights on the target computer to run code before attempting to stop processes or retrieving process property information. Any attempt to perform these tasks without the proper access authorization will result in an exception error.
See Also
Tasks
How to: Bind to Existing Processes
How to: Create Process Components
How to: Create and Remove Custom Event Logs