How to read command line arguments of another process in C#?

c# process diagnostics
Dirk Vollmar picture Dirk Vollmar · Feb 2, 2009 · Viewed 31.9k times · Source

How can I obtain the command line arguments of another process?

Using static functions of the System.Diagnostics.Process class I can obtain a list of running processes, e.g. by name:

Process[] processList = Process.GetProcessesByName(processName);

However, there is no way to access the command line used to start this process. How would one do that?

Answer

xcud picture xcud · Feb 2, 2009

If you did not use the Start method to start a process, the StartInfo property does not reflect the parameters used to start the process. For example, if you use GetProcesses to get an array of processes running on the computer, the StartInfo property of each Process does not contain the original file name or arguments used to start the process. (source: MSDN)

Stuart's WMI suggestion is a good one:

string wmiQuery = string.Format("select CommandLine from Win32_Process where Name='{0}'", processName);
ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(wmiQuery);
ManagementObjectCollection retObjectCollection = searcher.Get();
foreach (ManagementObject retObject in retObjectCollection)
    Console.WriteLine("[{0}]", retObject["CommandLine"]);

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