How to kill a process from WiX

Question

I am developing an installer using Wix and need to kill a process (not application) silently during installation so the user doesn't get a pop up asking to kill the process or wait and restart. I have seen solutions for killing an application but not a process.

Monofilament

Hi @Monofilament how did you solve it? cause i'm doing the same thing as the marked answer but it doesn't work for me. i'm using win 10 thanks – Opalina

@ElamirOhana This was years ago and I haven't worked with WiX since, however there is a comment on the selected answer (that worked for me) regarding the new version of WiX, maybe that can help you figure it out: "From the docs, CAQuietExec will be unavailable in 4.0. There are equivalent replacements at the link. – Will" – Monofilament

Answer 1

After some digging around I found this solution which uses the WixUtilExtension Quiet Execution Custom Action http://wix.sourceforge.net/manual-wix3/qtexec.htm:

<InstallExecuteSequence>
  <Custom Action='MyProcess.TaskKill' Before='InstallValidate'/>
</InstallExecuteSequence>

<Property Id="QtExecCmdLine" 
          Value='"[WindowsFolder]\System32\taskkill.exe" /F /IM MyProcess.exe'/>
<CustomAction Id="MyProcess.TaskKill" 
              BinaryKey="WixCA" 
              DllEntry="CAQuietExec" 
              Execute="immediate" 
              Return="ignore"/>

<Directory Id="TARGETDIR" Name="SourceDir">
  <Directory Id="WindowsFolder" Name="WINDOWS"/>
    ...

Monofilament

Is there a possiblity to get this working for proecesses which are running with admin rights? Currently this wont work if a process i running at an admin account cause the qtexec has not enough rights to kill the process. – Coranto

Be carefull taskkill is not available in the HOME editions of windows. – Jackhammer

From the docs, CAQuietExec will be unavailable in 4.0. There are equivalent replacements at the link. – Lilialiliaceous

btw, if your app can process the WM_CLOSE message properly, then you don't need to use the /F flag. – Embrocation

Answer 2

I have used the CloseApplication element to do this, if I understand your needs. The processes I killed don't show as applications in Task Manager. Depends on what process class you're talking about, though.

Jennette