Python – Get list of running processes
A Process is a program that is being executed (processed). A process may not have to be one run explicitly by the user, it could be a system process spawned by the operating system. Any applications that execute on an operating system firstly creates a process of its own in order to execute. In a typical OS installation, most processes are os services and background applications, that are run to maintain the operating system, software and hardware.
In this article, we will take a look at different ways of obtaining the list of running processes of a Windows OS, through Python. Firstly, we would describe a python method in order to achieve the result and then would look at a command found in the Windows Command Processor for the same.
Method 1:
We would be using the wmi library for getting the list of running processes on Windows OS. In order the install the module, execute the following command in the command interpreter of your operating system:-
Python3
3196 RuntimeBroker.exe 3524 ShellExperienceHost.exe 3548 SearchIndexer.exe 3796 SearchUI.exe 4136 IDMan.exe 4368 IEMonitor.exe 4488 notepad.exe 2616 SettingSyncHost.exe 4212 dasHost.exe 4664 AdaptiveSleepService.exe 4716 svchost.exe 5412 chrome.exe 1376 chrome.exe 1280 cmd.exe 4928 conhost.exe 5596 py.exe 5060 python.exe 1508 WmiPrvSE.exe
Explanation:
Firstly, we initialize the WMI() function of wmi library. This allows us to use the functions found inside it such as WMI.Win32_Service, WMI.Win32_Process, WMI.Win32_Printjob which are designed to perform different tasks. We would be using the WMI.Win32_Process function in order to get the list of running processes on the system. Then we called the function WMI.Win32_Process() to get the running processes, iterated through each process and stored in variable process. Then we obtained the ProcessID (pid) and ProcessName (name) of the process using the associated attributes. We used F-strings for the output in order to add padding to the output to align it properly.
Method 2:
In this method, we would be using a command found inside the Windows Command Processor (cmd.exe) under the name WMIC ( Windows Management Instrumentation Command line) in order to get the desired result. WMIC is a commandline utility that allows users to performs Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) operations with a command prompt. For the purpose of getting running processes, we would be executing the command:
wmic process get description, processid
Python3
Description ProcessId System Idle Process 0 System 4 smss.exe 340 csrss.exe 460 wininit.exe 604 csrss.exe 624 winlogon.exe 692 services.exe 736 lsass.exe 756 svchost.exe 844 svchost.exe 904 dwm.exe 1012 svchost.exe 80 svchost.exe 420 atiesrxx.exe 1076 svchost.exe 1992 svchost.exe 2032 MsMpEng.exe 2052 NisSrv.exe 2852 sihost.exe 3032 taskhostw.exe 2148 GoogleCrashHandler.exe 2712 GoogleCrashHandler64.exe 2704 explorer.exe 2892 RuntimeBroker.exe 3196 ShellExperienceHost.exe 3524 SearchIndexer.exe 3548 chrome.exe 1340 chrome.exe 2216
Note: It is not mandatory to use the os library for the purpose. The user could pick any other alternatives (Subprocess, shutil etc) which allows for commandline command execution.
Explanation:
We used the function popen() found inside the os module, in order to execute the command in the command processor. Then we passed the output of the above command to read() in order to get data in readable form out of os._wrap_close object. In the end, we displayed the output.
We will use the subprocess module to interact with cmd and to retrieve information into your python ide. we can read the cmd command through the subprocess module.
Let’s see this logic, if we run this wmic process list brief code into our terminal then we got like this:
- import module
- Get the output for the command “wmic process list brief ” using subprocess.check_output()
- Now get the Split the string and arrange your data with your own needs.
Python3
b'HandleCount Name Priority ProcessId ThreadCount WorkingSetSize 0 System Idle Process 0 0 8 8192 5649 System 8 4 222 1835008 0 Registry 8 120 4 33910784 89 smss.exe 11 516 2 532480 815 csrss.exe 13 652 13 2019328 217 wininit.exe 13 740 1 3239936 781 services.exe 9 812 8 8294400 1843 lsass.exe 9 832 7 14864384 86 svchost.exe 8 1020 1 1351680 32 fontdrvhost.exe 8 308 5 196608 1526 svchost.exe 8 8 12 38608896 270 WUDFHost.exe 8 592 5 2097152 1479 svchost.exe 8 1056 11 16363520 541 svchost.exe 8 1104 15 4509696 279 svchost.exe 8 1260 3 2584576 146 svchost.exe 8 1284 1 6389760 214 svchost.exe 8 1300 3 3452928 327 svchost.exe 8 1308 6 5795840 345 svchost.exe 8 1332 13 10571776 395 svchost.exe 8 1452 7 5079040 261 svchost.exe 8 1460 5 5914624 161 svchost.exe 8 1472 2 4902912 390 svchost.exe 8 1580 11 9826304 348 WUDFHost.exe 13 1652 12 11526144 225 svchost.exe 8 1736 2 10473472 205 svchost.exe 8 1744 1 2093056 278 svchost.exe 8 1752 2 4444160 174 svchost.exe 8 1824 4 4063232 224 svchost.exe 8 1832 6 3821568 593 svchost.exe 8 2024 5 7610368 186 svchost.exe 8 1424 2 5058560 168 igfxCUIService.exe 8 2120 2 3579904 435 svchost.exe 8 2188 6 12341248 279 svchost.exe 8 2220 10 5017600 227 svchost.exe 8 2296 3 7024640 221 svchost.exe 8 2308 3 1908736 384 svchost.exe 8 2396 7 8499200 0 Memory Compression 8 2424 54 298409984 240 svchost.exe 8 2440 2 4845568 179 svchost.exe 8 2476 5 3567616 239 svchost.exe 8 2660 8 5775360 3352 svchost.exe 8 2684 9 6230016 225 svchost.exe 8 2816 2 4804608 487 svchost.exe 8 2872 7 9641984 473 svchost.exe 8 2912 4 13836288 142 svchost.exe 8 3032 4 2727936 633 svchost.exe 8 3048 3 16154624 555 svchost.exe 8 2072 14 12455936 267 svchost.exe 8 2936 4 7462912 465 spoolsv.exe 8 3168 7 4685824 420 svchost.exe 8 3200 10 8019968 187 svchost.exe 8 3324 6 2433024 174 svchost.exe 8 3572 2 2650112 416 svchost.exe 8 3584 5 13344768 540 svchost.exe 8 3592 10 24936448 161 IntelCpHDCPSvc.exe 8 3604 3 2052096 406 svchost.exe 8 3612 19 25100288