QUERY: How to control external exe & read it's process details

I would like to create a service or background running program (something that minimizes to system tray).

It would have a path list of external applications, eg.

- C:\App1\Task1.exe
- C:\App2\Task2.exe
- C:\App3\Task3.exe

It would start the first one and monitor the process details (CPU Usage, Mem Usage, and maybe I/O Writes). Each application will do their jobs for a couple of minutes then go idle - hence completed the task. At this point the CPU Usage = 0, Mem Usage, etc. will be idle.

Then I need to close/kill that process and start the next application in the list. And this repeats as above and so on.

Does anyone know how to execute an external program, monitor the process details, then kill it?

Are you trying to reinvent the Mark Russinovich's Process Explorer? :confused:

Well, the simplest task is "to execute an external program" - just use CreateProcess API.
To "dirty" terminate the program - TerminateProcess (but first try to PostMessage(WM_CLOSE) to its main window if it is a window application)
...

... and for monitoring process activity you can use performance counters.