TSKILL not TSKILLing under WOW64

I'm maintaining a VB6 COM application, which sometimes fails to shutdown
properly (I think due to a certain scanner driver, but that's not the point
at the moment). I've come up with a solution that has worked fine on 32-bit
OS's:

As my program shuts down, it runs a second program (also written in VB6)
whose only function is to wait a few seconds and then shell "TSKILL <name of
first program>". If my program did not exit on its own, this kills it.

But it fails to work on Windows 7 - 64 bit. The "kill me" program runs
without error, but it doesn't shut down its target.

TSKILL works fine when I run it at a command prompt.

Any ideas on how I can achieve the "kill me" effect for my application?

The problem is that TSKill is only available as a 64-bit application. When
you run the command from within the 32-bit VB script, it can't see the
64-bit Windows\System directory. What it sees is the 32-bit version of the
directory which doesn't have tskill. You'll need to find a different way to
kill the process.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/russel




"iwhitman2055" <> wrote in message
newsCB6FF23-C81C-4A63-9940-...
> I'm maintaining a VB6 COM application, which sometimes fails to shutdown
> properly (I think due to a certain scanner driver, but that's not the
> point
> at the moment). I've come up with a solution that has worked fine on
> 32-bit
> OS's:
>
> As my program shuts down, it runs a second program (also written in VB6)
> whose only function is to wait a few seconds and then shell "TSKILL <name
> of
> first program>". If my program did not exit on its own, this kills it.
>
> But it fails to work on Windows 7 - 64 bit. The "kill me" program runs
> without error, but it doesn't shut down its target.
>
> TSKILL works fine when I run it at a command prompt.
>
> Any ideas on how I can achieve the "kill me" effect for my application?

Thanks for the addon. I only speak PowerShell these days, where we have
Stop-Process, and I couldn't remember the old way. ;-)

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/russel




"Stefan Pendl" <> wrote in message
news:...
> On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:30:47 -0800, "Charlie Russel - MVP"
> <> wrote:
>
>>
>>The problem is that TSKill is only available as a 64-bit application. When
>>you run the command from within the 32-bit VB script, it can't see the
>>64-bit Windows\System directory. What it sees is the 32-bit version of the
>>directory which doesn't have tskill. You'll need to find a different way
>>to
>>kill the process.
>
> Use TASKKILL instead, which is available as 32 and 64-bit version on
> 64-bit Windows.
>
> ---
> Stefan Pendl
>
> Windows Vista SP2
> AMD Turion X2 RM-70 2 GHz
> 4 GB RAM