In Windows, Killing an application through Python

Question

I am trying to kill external running applications like Windows Paint , a .mp3 and similar programs through a python script.

I open the program through os.startfile . Any ideas how I can close the programs efficiently? I am using a Windows 7 machine. I'd appreciate the help a lot! Thanks!

Answer 1

As of Python 2.7 os.kill works on Windows. You could find the PID using this recipe .

Answer 2

Popen will let you kill an opened process, but that won't prompt to save files, etc.

p = subprocess.Popen(['notepad', 'tmp.txt'])
#later
p.kill()

Answer 3

When you ask Windows to launch something with os.startfile() , you don't get a handle to the created process. This is because the underlying ShellExecute() function does not return a handle to the created process. I believe this is because not all actions actually result in a process being created at all (for example with in-process COM servers or other esoteria).