windows PID = 0 valid?

windows pid
user156144 picture user156144 · Jul 12, 2010 · Viewed 31k times · Source

In Windows, is 0 valid PID for a process or is it reserved by OS? It would be nice if you can provide a link to a doc that says it is reserved or what. Thank!

Answer

developmentalinsanity picture developmentalinsanity · Jul 12, 2010

Open task manager - switch to the processes tab (maybe click "View", "Show columns" and enable the PID column).

PID 0 is the System Idle Process. Since that process isn't really a process and never exits, I suspect that it is always the case.

No documentation available to me, but I'm pretty certain this is always going to be the case.

Related questions

What is the maximum process Id on Windows?

What is the maximum process id I can get by calling DWORD GetProcessId(HANDLE) or DWORD GetCurrentProcessId()? It is not documented on the API's documentation page.

Read More
Get the PID of a Windows service by the name of the service

Is there a way of getting the PID of a windows service with a command in a batch script by just knowing the name of the service?

Read More
Get the PID of the process started by CreateProcess()

Let me start off by stating that I'm not from C background. I'm a PHP developer. So everything that I've coded so far is by taking bits and pieces from other examples and fine tuning them to meet my requirements. …

Read More