Hi! I have 5 computers on my home network all sharing a single internet connection. One of the problems is you can't download and play a game at the same time so we'll currently yelling through the walls "TIM TURN THAT ******* kazaa off!!!" and such or "STEVE are you downloading?" or "Dad are you playing a game?" So what i want to do is make an applicaation that can identify a process running in the background and show it to everyone on the network running the program. My question is how can i tell what process is running in the background? if a certain process is running. I'm using C++ and MFC with MS visual C++ 6.0. Thanks :)

Sorry, can't help with the background question. You've probably considered the other options, but just in case you haven't: If you are using dial up, have you considered using "Internet Connection Service" that is part of Windows XP. I don't use dialup, so don't know anything about it other than it exists. But using it, you should be able to get all or most of your computers to share the dialup connection. To get more info, lookup up ICS. If you are using cable or DSL, for about $50 you can get a router that will sit between your cable/dsl modem and the network and allow all computers to access the network thru the one connection. For $50, you'll find only a four port router, so you'll have to also use an additional switch or hub since you have more than four computers, but since you have a network, you probably have one of those. As I re-read your post, I wonder if you already use one of the things I suggested and are just talking about network slowdown because of the downloading. In that case, as Gilda Radner always said, "Never mind".

There are two programs included in Windows that may help you. If everybody has full access to all the machines then here's something you can try. I'm not sure if it works on XP Home, but it does on Pro. The first is TASKLIST. This will display all the processes running on either the local or remote computer. To view the process list on a remote computer type the following at the command prompt: tasklist /s <computername> This shows you all the programs running on the computer specified. Look for the programs you're talking about such as kazaa.exe, shareaza.exe, or whatever other programs that you might use. Note the PID (process ID) of the one you want to kill, then run this program: taskkill /s <computername> /pid <PID> That will terminate the remote process. If you know the name of the process you can also end it like this: taskkill /s <computername> /im <processname> ie: TASKKILL /S COMPUTER /IM kazaa.exe You can see more by typing either 'tasklist /?' or 'taskkill /?' at the command prompt. It's worth noting that it's not very nice just to kill a process remotely. The other user is given no notice, the program is just killed and it's always possible for data loss and/or corruption.

Tasklist doesn't exist on win2k pro?

sorry you guys don't understand what i want to do i think. Everyone can share access well and i'm not having a problem closing processes. The problem is our DSL has very limited bandwith and all 5 of us can access it at same time but we have house rules like no kazaa when someone wants to play a game or only surfing when someone is downloading. Its easier to follow these rules when you know what other people are doing. And i want to make a program that will see these applications running and tell all other network members that information.

so basically you just want this program to show if a certain task is being run and you want it updated in real time? if you wanted to you could write a simple C++ program that would execute the tasklist command and store the processes in a text file and then have the program open up the text file every 2 minutes or whatever. as for if you wanted it to be updated in real time and have it filtered to display only if certain processes were being run, thatd get a bit tricker and i'm not sure how you'd go about it. but lets google some stuff..