How to Iterate all running process in your system.

In your system there might be several process running at the same time. So how to iterate through the running process in your system and get their infos?

You can use ToolHelp library for iterating and getting process information. First you’ve to take a snapshot of running process at that moment by calling CreateToolhelp32Snapshot(). Then you should iterate each process info by calling Process32First() and Process32Next(). See the code snippet below.

#include <tlhelp32.h>
    ...
// Get the process list snapshot.
HANDLE hProcessSnapShot = CreateToolhelp32Snapshot(
                                        TH32CS_SNAPALL,
                                        0 );

// Initialize the process entry structure.
PROCESSENTRY32 ProcessEntry = { 0 };
ProcessEntry.dwSize = sizeof( ProcessEntry );

// Get the first process info.
BOOL Return = FALSE;
Return = Process32First( hProcessSnapShot,
                         &ProcessEntry );

// Getting process info failed.
if( !Return )
{
    return;
}

do
{
    // print the process details.
    cout << _T("Process EXE File:") << ProcessEntry.szExeFile
                                    << endl;
    cout << _T("Process ID:") << ProcessEntry.th32ProcessID
                              << endl;
    cout << _T("Process References:") << ProcessEntry.cntUsage
                                      << endl;
    cout << _T("Process Thread Count:") << ProcessEntry.cntThreads
                                        << endl;

    // check the PROCESSENTRY32 for other members.
}
while( Process32Next( hProcessSnapShot, &ProcessEntry ));

// Close the handle
CloseHandle( hProcessSnapShot );

Together with process info, you can also get information regarding – Modules, Heaps, threads using these ToolHelp library functions. have a look at MSDN.

Targeted Audience – Intermediate.