Closing Running Applications

I have come up with a way to get rid of running applications during the install process. I know NSIS has the SendMessage function that you can use, but sometimes it doesn't work.

I was trying to shut down Microsoft Outlook with the SendMessage function and it wouldn't close when minimized. I tried it on several machines and the dinosaur known as Windows NT won't allow SendMessage to close a minimized window. Windows 2000 and XP work just fine.

I wrote a little command line app that takes the window class as a parameter and uses it to set the application window to "normal" mode and then close it.

You can download it here:



I also included a cool little utility that allows you to find the class of a window.

Enjoy!

Re: Closing Running Applications

Originally posted by [FAIL]Pagannn
I have come up with a way to get rid of running applications during the install process. I know NSIS has the SendMessage function that you can use, but sometimes it doesn't work.
................

You are delphi programmer, right? 😁
Why not try this, it produces 14k code, instead of 20k.

program stopper;

uses
windows;

Var hwnd: Integer;
begin
hwnd := FindWindow(pchar(paramstr(1)),Nil);
If Hwnd <> 0 Then PostMessage(hwnd, 18, 0, 0);
end.

And then in the .nsi file use the Class of the program to close as parameter instead of it's handle.

P.S. UPXed, the size is 8,5k (8704b)

Minor Issue

First off, I haven't touched Delphi in many years. While I agree that it is superior to the MS bastardization of C++, the market in my area just isn't there.

The code you put up works well, but I don't see that it restores the window to SW_NORMAL before sending the WM_CLOSE message. Because of my time away from Delphi, I might not be remembering the "SendMessage" wrapper paramters.

I could get the exe file smaller if I remove this as well as the command line response strings.

But thanks for the response! I'll look for other ways to get the exe file downsized.

You can also modify CloseWinamp Function and get a lower overhead.

;------------------------------------------------------------------------------

; CloseWinamp

; 

; Closes all running instances of Winamp 1.x/2.x

;

; modifies no other variables

Function CloseWinamp

  Push $0

  loop:

    FindWindow $0 "Winamp v1.x"

    IntCmp $0 0 done

     SendMessage $0 16 0 0

     Sleep 100

     Goto loop

  done:

  Pop $0

FunctionEnd

What is the class name of Outlook ? Anybody with Spy++ and Outlook (I don't use the latter, so I did not install it) is welcome to tell us.

Outlook Class Name

The class name of the Outlook window is 'rctrl_renwnd32'.