We Keep Coding

Batch script calling robocopy in Process won't terminate

If process.Kill() is called from another thread or even another program, the process never comes out of WaitForExit() if the batch script used robocopy.exe until it is finished as if it wasn't killed.
Robocopy.exe is called from the batch script. Every other script or program ends as you'd expect.
ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
startInfo.FileName = "batch.bat";
startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
startInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
startInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
startInfo.OutputDataReceived += CaptureHandler;
startInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
startInfo.ErrorDataReceived += CaptureHandler;
process.Start();
process.BeginOutputReadLine();
process.BeginErrorReadLine();
process.WaitForExit();
The batch script looks like:
#echo off
call "robocopy.exe" "somedir" "somedest" /mir /fp /ndl /njh /njs /ns
I have a feeling it has to do with the output handlers.
I tried using process.CancelErrorRead and process.CancelOutputRead() as well after the Kill() call and before, no luck.
Oddly, if you use process.WaitForExit(timeout) overload, it will return true immediately after Kill() from the other thread. However, it's lying. The process is still running! If you try process.WaitForExit() again, as per the MSDN doc, it will still wait for the process to finish despite HasExited saying true.
To ensure that asynchronous event handling has been completed, call the WaitForExit() overload that takes no parameter after receiving a true from this overload.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ty0d8k56(v=vs.110).aspx

You are successfully killing the batch processor (cmd.exe) but doing so won't kill robocopy, which is a separate process.
It doesn't seem to be documented, but when we look at the .NET source code it turns out that the Process.WaitForExit() method doesn't just wait for the process to exit, it also waits for end-of-file on the standard output and standard error streams. In this scenario, that means that it waits for robocopy to finish even after the batch processor has been killed.
(The overload of Process.WaitForExit with a timeout does not have this extra logic.)
I think this constitutes a bug in the .NET framework. At the very least, it should be documented.
As a workaround, you can use .HasExited and/or the version of WaitForExit with a timeout to determine whether the process has exited or not. Of course, in your scenario you might prefer to wait for grandchild processes, in which case your code is already behaving as desired.

I ran into the same problem. In my case, dropping the /mt switch from the RoboCopy argument list seemed to fix the issue.

Having followed up on Harry Johnston's helpful answer, I found that the process completes normally when you avoid RedirectStandardOutput = true. If this isn't an acceptable solution I found that using robocopy's /LOG:"C:\logs\robocopy.txt" switch to send its standard output to an external log file also works (although you lose the ability to get the file/directory log output from the process object itself).

Looks like right now the only way to do this without the application knowing to terminate Robocopy.exe specifically is to do kill the children of the script process before killing the script itself:
Kill process tree programmatically in C#
/// <summary>
/// Kill a process, and all of its children, grandchildren, etc.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="pid">Process ID.</param>
private static void KillProcessAndChildren(int pid)
{
ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher
("Select * From Win32_Process Where ParentProcessID=" + pid);
ManagementObjectCollection moc = searcher.Get();
foreach (ManagementObject mo in moc)
{
KillProcessAndChildren(Convert.ToInt32(mo["ProcessID"]));
}
try
{
Process proc = Process.GetProcessById(pid);
proc.Kill();
}
catch (ArgumentException)
{
// Process already exited.
}
}

How to wait until MSTSC.exe exits

I have created a management application that also allows to quickly access a remote desktop session to remote machines. I need to wait until the process ends, so I can close the VPN connection to the remote server. Everything works fine, except waiting for the process to end.
The following code is being used to start the MSTSC process and wait until it ends:
var process = new Process
{
StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("mstsc.exe"),
EnableRaisingEvents = true
};
process.Exited += (o, e) => Console.WriteLine("Process stopped.");
process.Start();
Console.ReadLine();
The Exited event is raised almost immediately after the program starts. When I replace mstsc.exe with notepad.exe everything works as expected. I thought that MSTSC might fork itself and abort the initial process.
But it is possible to wait for MSTSC to end using the following command (from the commandline):
start /wait mstsc.exe
This command doesn't return until I exit the remote desktop session. Given that information I replaced my code with this:
var process = new Process
{
StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("cmd.exe"),
Arguments = "/c start /wait mstsc.exe",
EnableRaisingEvents = true
};
process.Exited += (o, e) => Console.WriteLine("Process stopped.");
process.Start();
Console.ReadLine();
This would run CMD.exe and it will issue the start /wait mstsc.exe command. If that ends, the CMD process ends as well and I'm fine (with a nasty workaround, but okay). Unfortunately, this doesn't happen. The CMD process terminates immediately. Somebody knows what I am doing wrong?

process.WaitForExit();
Won't work because mstsc on start opens new copy of itself and closes original.
process.WaitForExit();
process = Process.GetProcessesByName(process.ProcessName).First();
process.WaitForExit();
Will work but it's awful workaround.
Update 1:
It seems that mstsc closes original process but NOT it's output stream!
So you can wait for process StandardOutput to close.
var process = new Process
{
StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("mstsc.exe") { UseShellExecute = false, RedirectStandardOutput = true }
};
process.Start();
process.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd(); //This will wait for stream to close.
Or if you don't want to block current thread:
var process = new Process
{
StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("mstsc.exe") { UseShellExecute = false, RedirectStandardOutput = true }
};
process.Start();
var outputResultPromise = process.StandardOutput.ReadToEndAsync();
outputResultPromise.ContinueWith(o=> Console.WriteLine("Stream closed"));
Console.ReadLine();

Here is the link at MSDN about starting mstsc,
It might be answer to your problem with mstsc closing immediately after running (raising Exited event). Try changing in Visual Studio target platform to AnyCPU.
Let's say your machine is 64bit Windows, your app is 32bit. The app runs 32bit mstsc. 32bit mstsc detects that Windows is 64bit, tries to close itself and run 64bit mstsc (Exited event is raised at that moment even though mstsc starts GUI window).
Changing target platform solved my issue.

There are multiple MSTSC processes running, so it's difficult to wait for one. What I don't understand is that CMD.EXE can do it when I use the start /wait command.

this worked with me:
process.Start();
Thread.Sleep(2000);
while(getNumProcesses() > 0)
process.WaitForExit();
private static int getNumProcesses()
{
Process[] myProcesses = Process.GetProcessesByName("mstsc");
return myProcesses.Length;
}

You cannot wait for mstsc.exe process. Say exactly, you cannot simply wait for end of remote desktop. When I observed mstsc.exe process by Process Monitor, mstsc passed his work to svchost, mstsc.exe ended, but remote desktop was still run.
But I wrote script for remoting application.
Script remoteCmd.cmd starts remoteApplication, remote machine creates a temp file ( \\tsclient\c..\temp\xxx) and remoteCmd.cmd waits until temp file exists.
See
https://github.com/turzik/WindowsScripts/tree/master/remoteApp

You need to call WaitForExit() after you call Start():
process.Start();
process.WaitForExit();
This overload causes the current thread to wait indefinitely to wait until the process exits. There's also an overload that allows you to specify the number of milliseconds you'd like to wait.

Wait properties windows dialog before continue script

I had a piece of code to display the properties window of a file,
ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo();
psi.FileName = #"C:\Users\nyongrand\Desktop\Internet Download Manager.lnk";
psi.Verb = "properties";
Process process = Process.Start(psi);
process.WaitForExit(); //This give me exception, Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
what I want is to wait until the window properties is closed, because if my code closed the properties window will be closed as well, I need a solution between, my code is able to wait for the properties window closed, or my code can exit without closing the properties window.

The exception you're getting means that process is null at the time you try to call its WaitForExit member method. So the question you should be asking is why.
Start with the documentation for the overload of the Process.Start function that you're calling to see what it actually returns. Sure enough, it returns a Process object, but only under certain conditions:
Return Value
Type: System.Diagnostics.Process
A new Process component that is associated with the process resource, or null if no process resource is started (for example, if an existing process is reused).
And, from the "Remarks" section:
Note: If the address of the executable file to start is a URL, the process is not started and null is returned.
So, if an existing process is re-used, the Process.Start method will return null. And you cannot call methods on null.

Try replacing
Process process = Process.Start(psi);
with
Process process = new Process();
if(process.Start(psi))
{
process.WaitForExit();
}
else
{
//Do something here to handle your process failing to start
}
The problem you face with your code is that Process.Start() returns a Boolean. It's not a factory for Process objects.

Start process and allow caller to end without waiting for process to finish

I need to start a process from a C# console app and then allow the console app to finish/end without waiting for the process/thread to finish.
How do I do this?

You need to avoid making your new process a child process of the current process:
ProcessStartInfo sinfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
sinfo.UseShellExecute = true; // Do not wait - make the process stand alone
sinfo.FileName = "PathAndNameofExe";
Process.Start(sinfo);

Process.Start("TheNameOfTheOtherProcess.exe");

Process.HasExited returns true even though process is running?

I have been observing that Process.HasExited sometimes returns true even though the process is still running.
My code below starts a process with name "testprogram.exe" and then waits for it to exit. The problem is that sometimes I get thrown the exception; it seems that even though HasExited returns true the process itself is still alive in the system - how can this be??
My program writes to a log file just before it terminates and thus I need to be absolutely sure that this log file exists (aka the process has terminated/finished) before reading it. Continuously checking for it's existence is not an option.
// Create new process object
process = new Process();
// Setup event handlers
process.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
process.OutputDataReceived += OutputDataReceivedEvent;
process.ErrorDataReceived += ErrorDataReceivedEvent;
process.Exited += ProgramExitedEvent;
// Setup start info
ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo
{
FileName = ExePath,
// Must be false to redirect IO
UseShellExecute = false,
RedirectStandardOutput = true,
RedirectStandardError = true,
Arguments = arguments
};
process.StartInfo = psi;
// Start the program
process.Start();
while (!process.HasExited)
Thread.Sleep( 500 );
Process[] p = Process.GetProcessesByName( "testprogram" );
if ( p.Length != 0 )
throw new Exception("Oh oh");
UPDATE: I just tried waiting with process.WaitForExit() instead of the polling loop and the result is the exact same.
Addition: The above code was only to demonstrate a 'clearer' problem alike. To make it clear; my problem is NOT that I still can get a hold of the process by Process.GetProcessesByName( "testprogram" ); after it set HasExited to true.
The real problem is that the program I am running externally writes a file -just before- it terminates (gracefully). I use HasExited to check when the process has finished and thus I know I can read the file (because the process exited!), but it seems that HasExited returns true even sometimes when the program has NOT written the file to disk yet. Here's example code that illustrates the exact problem:
// Start the program
process.Start();
while (!process.HasExited)
Thread.Sleep( 500 );
// Could also be process.WaitForExit(), makes no difference to the result
// Now the process has quit, I can read the file it has exported
if ( !File.Exists( xmlFile ) )
{
// But this exception is thrown occasionally, why?
throw new Exception("xml file not found");
}

I realize this is an old post, but in my quest to find out why my app running the Exited event before the app had even opened I found out something that I though might be useful to people experiencing this problem in the future.
When a process is started, it is assigned a PID. If the User is then prompted with the User Account Control dialog and selects 'Yes', the process is re-started and assigned a new PID.
I sat with this for a few hours, hopefully this can save someone time.

I would suggest you to try this way:
process.Start();
while (!process.HasExited)
{
// Discard cached information about the process.
process.Refresh();
// Just a little check!
Console.WriteLine("Physical Memory Usage: " + process.WorkingSet64.ToString());
Thread.Sleep(500);
}
foreach (Process current in Process.GetProcessesByName("testprogram"))
{
if ((current.Id == process.Id) && !current.HasExited)
throw new Exception("Oh oh!");
}
Anyway... in MSDN page of HasExited I'm reading the following hightlighted note:
When standard output has been redirected to asynchronous event
handlers, it is possible that output processing will not have
completed when this property returns true. To ensure that asynchronous
event handling has been completed, call the WaitForExit() overload
that takes no parameter before checking HasExited.
That could be somehow linked to your problem as you are redirecting everything.

I know, this is an old post but maybe I can help someone. The Process class may behave unexpectedly. HasExited will return true if the process has exited or if the process runs with administrator privileges and your program only has user privileges.
I have posted a question regarding this a while back here, but did not receive a satisfiable answer.

First off, are you sure testprogram does not spawn a process of its own and exit without waiting for that process to finish? We're dealing with some kind of race condition here, and testprogram can be significant.
Second point I'd like to make is about this - "I need to be absolutely sure that this logfile exists". Well, there is no such thing. You can make your check, and then the file is gone. The common way to address this is not to check, but rather to do what you want to do with the file. Go ahead, read it, catch exceptions, retry if the thing seems unstable and you don't want to change anything. The functional check-and-do does not work well if you have more than one actor (thread or whatever) in the system.
A bunch of random ideas follows.
Have you tried using FileSystemWatcher and not depending on process completion?
Does it get any better if you try reading the file (not checking if it exists, but acting instead) in the process.Exited event? [it shouldn't]
Is the system healthy? Anything suspicious in the Event Log?
Can some really aggressive antivirus policy be involved?
(Can't tell much without seeing all the code and looking into testprogram.)

So just for a further investigation into the root cause of the problem you should maybe check out what's really happening by using Process Monitor. Simply start it and include the external program and your own tool and let it record what happens.
Within the log you should see how the external tool writes to the output file and how you open that file. But within this log you should see in which order all these accesses happen.
The first thing that came to my mind is that the Process class doesn't lie and the process is really gone when it tells so. So problem is that at this point in time it seems that the file is still not fully available. I think this is a problem of the OS, cause it holds some parts of the file still within a cache that is not fully written onto the disk and the tool has simply exited itself without flushing its file handles.
With this in mind you should see within the log that the external tool created the file, exited and AFTER that the file will be flushed/closed (by the OS [maybe remove any filters when you found this point within the log]).
So if my assumptions are correct the root cause would be the bad behavior of your external tool which you can't change thus leading to simply wait a little bit after the process has exited and hope that the timeout is long enough to get the file flushed/closed by the OS (maybe try to open the file in a loop with a timeout till it succeeded).

There's two possibilities, the process object continues to hold a reference to the process, so it has exited, but it hasn't yet been deleted. Or you have a second instance of the process running. You should also compare the process Id to make sure. Try this.
....
// Start the program
process.Start();
while (!process.HasExited)
Thread.Sleep( 500 );
Process[] p = Process.GetProcessesByName( "testprogram" );
if ( p.Length != 0 && p[0].Id == process.id && ! p[0].HasExited)
throw new Exception("Oh oh");

For a start, is there an issue with using Process.WaitForExit rather than polling it?
Anyway, it is technically possible for the process to exit from a usable point of view but the process still be around briefly while it does stuff like flush disk cache. Is the log file especially large (or any operation it is performing heavy on disk writes)?

As per MSDN documentation for HasExited.
If a handle is open to the process,
the operating system releases the
process memory when the process has
exited, but retains administrative
information about the process, such as
the handle, exit code, and exit time.
Probably not related, but it's worth noting.
If it's only a problem 1/10 of the time, and the process disappears after a second anyway, depending on your usage of HasExited, try just adding another delay after the HasExited check works, like
while (!process.HasExited)
DoStuff();
Thread.Sleep(500);
Cleanup();
and see if the problem persists.
Personally, I've always just used the Exited event handler instead of any kind of polling, and a simplistic custom wrapper around System.Diagnostics.Process to handle things like thread safety, wrapping a call to CloseMainWindow() followed by WaitForExit(timeout) and finally Kill(), logging, et cetera, and never encountered a problem.

Maybe the problem is in the testprogram? Does this code nicely flush/close etc.? It seems to me if testprogram writes a file to disk, the file should at least be available (empty or not)

If you have web application, and your external program/process is generating files (write to disk) check if your IIS have rights to write to that folder if not on properties security add permission for your IIS user, that was the reason in my case, i was receiving process.HasExited =true, but produced files from the process was not completed, after struggling for a while i add full permissions to the folder where process was writhing and process.Refresh() as Zarathos described from above and everything was working as expected.

Use process_name.Refresh() before checking whether process has exited or not. Refresh() will clear all the cached information related to the process.