PowerShell 3.0 and later
In a previous tip we explained how you can turn Out-GridView into a selection dialog, and suggested a couple of ideas. One idea was to list all top level applications, and allow the user to select one, and kill it.
To get all top level applications, try this first:
PS> Get-Process | Where-Object MainWindowTitle | Select-Object -Property Name, Description, MainWindowTitle, StartTime
This line filters the process lists and shows only processes that have a MainWindowTitle property set. Effectively, it gets you a list of processes that have a window, omitting all invisible background processes.
Next, pipe the result to Out-GridView, and allow single selections:
PS> Get-Process | Where-Object MainWindowTitle | Select-Object -Property Name, Description, MainWindowTitle, StartTime | Out-GridView -Title 'Kill Application' - OutputMode Single | Stop-Process -WhatIf
This line opens a grid view window with all running processes, and when you select one and click “OK”, the process is killed. Well, not really: the sample code includes –WhatIf, so Stop-Process only simulates.
And that is a good thing, because you may notice that selecting one process will also kill all other processes with the same name.
This is because Stop-Process can receive two different pieces of information: a name (string), or a process ID (int). Since the line used Select-Object to limit the properties, and did not include the process ID, Stop-Process will pick the name – and kills any process with that name.
To be more specific, and kill only the selected process, make sure you include the process ID:
PS> Get-Process | Where-Object MainWindowTitle | Select-Object -Property Name, Id, Description, MainWindowTitle, StartTime | Out-GridView -Title 'Kill Application' - OutputMode Single | Stop-Process -WhatIf
