Check if process is running in Windows using only Python built-in modules

Question

I know that there are a couple of ways to complete that task using psutil or win32ui modules. But I wonder if there's an option to do that using Python built-in modules only? I have also found this question:

Check if PID exists on Windows with Python without requiring libraries

But in this case the object is located by PID and I want to do it using process name.

Answer 1

Maybe this will help you:

import subprocess

s = subprocess.check_output('tasklist', shell=True)
if "cmd.exe" in s:
    print s

Answer 2

Without PyWin32, you're going to have to go at it the hard way and use Python's ctypes module. Fortunately, there is already a post about this here on StackOverflow:

• How can I find a process by name and kill using ctypes?

You might also find this article useful for getting a list of the running processes:

• http://code.activestate.com/recipes/305279-getting-process-information-on-windows/