Determine if an Application has Stopped Responding

This example illustrates how to determine if an application is hung or has stopped responding. There is no clear definition of an application hanging. Typically the application is busy processing. But from a user's standpoint it has stopped responding.

Using the SendMessageTimeout function you can see if the target application is responding. Then you can terminate it if it is not.

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First, we need the handle to a window in the application whose status we want to check. This program gives the option to start either Internet Explorer or another application. In the process of starting the application we can retrieve its handle.

To start Internet Explorer an instance of Internet Explorer's application object is created and its visible property is set true. The window handle is available as a property of the IE object. To start another application the Shell command is used to launch the specified executable. The Shell command returns the process ID of the application it started. Knowing the process ID we can examine all top-level windows in the system until we find one whose process ID matches that from the Shell command.

To examine all windows we use the EnumWindows API to enumerate all of the existing windows. When you issue EnumWindows you pass it the address of a public function defined in your code using the AddressOf operator. This callback function, which I named fEnumWindowsCallBack, must reside in a .bas module. The operating system calls your function, fEnumWindowsCallBack in this case, for each window and passes it the handle of the identified window. EnumWindows continues until the last top-level window is enumerated or the callback function returns False. For more details, see my Enumerate Windows program.

As each window is passed back to fEnumWindowsCallBack the GetWindowThreadProcessId function extracts its process ID. When the process ID matches that from the shell command the enumeration is stopped and the window handle is stored.

Once the window handle is known it is used in the SendMessageTimeout function along with the SMTO_ABORTIFHUNG and SMTO_BLOCK flags. If the application appears to be hung, SendMessageTimeout returns with a zero value. A timeout period can be specified. I used a value of 1 second.

To stop an application that is not responding, the TerminateProcess API is used. TerminateProcess unconditionally ends a process. While this is fine when the app is hung, it should only be used as a last resort with a running application. TerminateProcess will prevent the application from closing open files and shutting down in an orderly fashion. To close a program that is still responding, see my Safely Stop a Running Process example.

Download this project and run it.

To check the status of Internet Explorer select the appropriate option and click the "Start Application" button. Then hit the "Status" button to display a status of responding. Enter a URL that causes blocking and click "Status" again. Now you should see the "Not Responding" message when you click the "Check Status" button.

To check the status of another application, select the corresponding option, enter the full path to the application's .exe and start the application. Now, have the application perform a task that takes a long time to complete. While the application is processing click the "Check Status" button. The appropriate message will display.

To end the application, press "Kill Application".