CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#process
Jayson Ragasa
Jayson Ragasa

Reputation: 1029

Detect if the application started made another process

The uninstallers from an application normally launch new process and I am trying to make my application know about it so if after the uninstallation, it will execute some tasks.

NSIS for example.

string uninstallstring = "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Pidgin\uninstall.exe"; // reg.GetValue("UninstallString").ToString();

Process p = new Process()
{
    StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo()
    {
        FileName = uninstallstring
    },
    EnableRaisingEvents = true
};
p.Start();
p.WaitForExit();
Debug.WriteLine(p.HasExited);
Debug.WriteLine(p.ExitCode);

// clean up TASKS after uninstall here
// clean clean clean

code above will try uninstall Pidgin. It will Start() and it should wait for the uninstaller to finish its job and show in Debug panel True/False (HasExited) as well as its ExitCode.

The problem there is, after Start() is executed, the "uninstall.exe" launched a new application "Au_.exe" in "C:\Users\Jayson\AppData\Local\Temp\~nsu.tmp" and "uninstall.exe" closed, WaitForExit() has done its job and Debug panel shows

True
0

those are "HasExited" and "ExitCode" but the Pidgin Uninstall is still running which tells me that "uninstall.exe" launched the "Au_.exe" as not his child process.

My question is, how do I make sure that the uninstaller finish its job?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 403

Answers (2)

Frank59
Frank59

Reputation: 3261

If you know name of application, started by unnistaller, you can try to check existence of his procces use Process.GetProcessesByName("Au_.exe") by timer. When procees appeared and then disappeared you can raise callback. Also you can read about GetExitCodeProcess

Upvotes: 2

Vitaliy Shibaev
Vitaliy Shibaev

Reputation: 1450

I think there is no general solution here. You rely on external component that doesn't work as expected (normally we expect that uninstall.exe will exit only after complete uninstall and will return corresponding error code, but it doesn't).

There are several workarounds:

  1. When uninstall.exe complete, look for Au_.exe process and wait for its completion.

  2. After uninstall.exe (and may be Au_.exe) check is it really uninstall Pidgin. You can check filesystem or some special registry keys. Probably you expect something before your custom cleanup tasks. If it was not uninstalled properly - repeat or don't clean up (may be show some error or write log message - it depends on your application).

  3. Made your custom uninstaller for Pidgin that will cleanup all necessary resources. Pidgin is open-source, so you can look how its installer works. May be it will be enough to simply modify existing installer.

  4. Don't worry about Au_.exe and just cleanup your resources - may be it's really not a problem for your application.

  5. (if possible) Ask user of your application to uninstall Pidgin. When user did it - make some simple checks (e.g. C:/Program Files/Pidgin is deleted) and do your cleanup.

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions