ToolHelpCE and CETaskManager - Working with processes in Windows CE using .NET Compact Framework

January 6, 2005 · 1 min read

ToolHelpCE is a Windows CE class library that allows you to enumerate the process list of a Windows CE device using managed code. This is the result of a little over 24 hours of my development time and allows you to overcome the limitation of the .NET Compact Framework which doesn't contain System.Diagnostics namespace's Process class.

Enumerating processes is as easy as writing the statements below:

ProcessCollection refProcColl = Process.CEProcessList; if (refProcColl == null) // unable to get the process list... else { foreach(Process refProcess in refProcColl) { // work with the properties and methods to get the processs details } }

It allows you to get process details like process ID, parent process ID, Module ID, process priority, process termination and lots more.

ToolHelpCE works with.NET CF 1.1. To exemplify how you can leverage its capacbilities, I wrote the CETaskManager - a basic but functional equivalent of the Windows NT Task Manager that allows you to list processes, view process details and terminate them. And all this is done using ToolHelpCE class library. Both ToolHelpCE and CETaskManager, which comes with VS.NET 2003 source code, can be downloaded from

Incase of any queries, do get in touch with me at gaurav-at-wintoolzone-dot-com.

This article is part of the GWB Archives. Original Author: Gaurav Khanna

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