[Visual BASIC 6] BOOST (v2)

I revisited BOOST this week. A friend had pointed out to me some time back that /P: and /L: were a bit of a pain when one wanted to speed something up quickly, or kill it quickly. So this version changes the command line handling.

This version also demonstrates how to kill a process. In fact it kills every process of the same name. I wish I'd had this a couple of years ago when I was doing stuff with Excel -- I'd end up with multiple Excel sessions which I would then have to kill off one-by-one through the Task Manager. (I eventually ended up installing Cygwin so that I could script the process.)

If you remember the original VBScript of BOOST and the first VB6 version, you'll see some similarities.

I've given up on using setsubsys in favour of using VBAdvance (which is now freeware) to handle the compile-to-console-app process. I'm still compressing the app using UPX.

First a few constants and the declarations, found on vb.mvps.org, for doing console I/O.

Option Explicit Const KILL_PROCESS = 0 '0 Const LOW_PRIORITY = 64 '1 Const BELOWNORMAL_PRIORITY = 16384 '2 Const NORMAL_PRIORITY = 32 '3 Const ABOVENORMAL_PRIORITY = 32768 '4 Const HIGH_PRIORITY = 256 '5 Const REALTIME_PRIORITY = 128 '6 Private Declare Function GetStdOutHandle Lib "kernel32" _ Alias "GetStdHandle" _ (Optional ByVal HandleType As Long = -11) As Long Private Declare Function WriteFile Lib "kernel32" _ (ByVal hFile As Long, _ ByVal lpBuffer As String, _ ByVal cToWrite As Long, _ ByRef cWritten As Long, _ Optional ByVal lpOverlapped As Long) As Long 'To keep things simple, wrap these two APIs in a single helper function like so: Private Function ConsoleWrite(sText As String) As Long WriteFile GetStdOutHandle, ByVal sText, Len(sText), ConsoleWrite End Function

Next, a few supporting functions. First off the rank, is an invocation syntax display. Notice that priority can now be specified either by a number (0 to kill, 1-6 for low to realtime) or by name (kill, low, belownormal, normal, abovenormal, high, realtime).

Sub Syntax() ConsoleWrite ("Syntax:" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "Boost {processname} {runlevel}" & vbNewLine & _ "Run level as number:" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "0 = KILL_PROCESS" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "1 = LOW_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "2 = BELOWNORMAL_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "3 = NORMAL_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "4 = ABOVENORMAL_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "5 = HIGH_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "6 = REALTIME_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine & vbNewLine & vbNewLine & _ "Run level as text:" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "kill = KILL_PROCESS" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "low = LOW_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "belownormal = BELOWNORMAL_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "normal = NORMAL_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "abovenormal = ABOVENORMAL_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "high = HIGH_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine & _ vbTab & "realtime = REALTIME_PRIORITY" & vbNewLine) End Sub

Second, the command line parser. This splits on space and tab and is based on code found at microsoft.public.vb.winapi

Function GetCommandLine(Optional MaxArgs) As Variant 'Declare variables. Dim C As String Dim CmdLine As String Dim CmdLnLen As Integer Dim InArg As Boolean Dim i As Integer Dim NumArgs As Integer Dim ArgArray As Variant 'See if MaxArgs was provided. If IsMissing(MaxArgs) Then MaxArgs = 10 'Make array of the correct size. ReDim ArgArray(MaxArgs - 1) NumArgs = 0: InArg = False 'Get command line arguments. CmdLine = Command() CmdLnLen = Len(CmdLine) 'Go thru command line one character 'at a time. For i = 1 To CmdLnLen C = Mid(CmdLine, i, 1) 'Test for space or tab. If (C <> " " And C <> vbTab) Then 'Neither space nor tab. 'Test if already in argument. If Not InArg Then 'New argument begins. 'Test for too many arguments. If NumArgs = MaxArgs Then Exit For NumArgs = NumArgs + 1 InArg = True End If 'Concatenate character to current argument. ArgArray(NumArgs - 1) = ArgArray(NumArgs - 1) & C Else 'Found a space or tab. 'Set InArg flag to False. InArg = False End If Next i 'Resize array just enough to hold arguments. ReDim Preserve ArgArray(NumArgs - 1) 'Return Array in Function name. GetCommandLine = ArgArray '() End Function

Third, the two routines which wrap the WMI functions to set priority and to kill process. The latter was found at tek-tips. If I remember correctly, the places in each routine where it says

sComputer = "."

could, in fact, have some other computer's name. If you had sufficient privilege you could be tweaking or killing a process on someone else's machine.

Function SetPriority(sProcess As String, nPriority As Integer) As Boolean Dim sComputer As String Dim oWMIService As Object Dim cProcesses As Object Dim oProcess As Object Dim bDone As Boolean bDone = False sComputer = "." Set oWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & sComputer & "\root\cimv2") On Error Resume Next Set cProcesses = oWMIService.ExecQuery _ ("Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = '" & sProcess & "'") For Each oProcess In cProcesses oProcess.SetPriority (nPriority) If Err.Number <> 0 Then GoTo DoNext End If bDone = True DoNext: Next On Error GoTo 0 SetPriority = bDone End Function Function KillProcess(sProcess As String) As Integer Dim oWMIService As Object Dim sComputer As String Dim oProcess As Object Dim nDone As Integer nDone = 0 sComputer = "." 'this computer Set oWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:") For Each oProcess In oWMIService.InstancesOf("Win32_process") If LCase(oProcess.Name) = LCase(sProcess) Then oProcess.Terminate nDone = nDone + 1 End If Next KillProcess = nDone End Function

Finally, the Main subroutine. Notice the additions to the priorities collection. Note also the change in the way the command line is handled.

Because there's no .Exists method on Collections, the .Item call is wrapped in an 'On Error' so that a non-existent item situation is caught appropriately.

Sub Main() Dim sLevel As String Dim nLevel As Integer Dim sProcess As String Dim sCommand As String Dim nInstances As Integer Dim dPriorities As New Collection dPriorities.Add Item:=KILL_PROCESS, Key:="kill" dPriorities.Add Item:=LOW_PRIORITY, Key:="low" dPriorities.Add Item:=BELOWNORMAL_PRIORITY, Key:="belownormal" dPriorities.Add Item:=NORMAL_PRIORITY, Key:="normal" dPriorities.Add Item:=ABOVENORMAL_PRIORITY, Key:="abovenormal" dPriorities.Add Item:=HIGH_PRIORITY, Key:="high" dPriorities.Add Item:=REALTIME_PRIORITY, Key:="realtime" dPriorities.Add Item:=KILL_PROCESS, Key:="0" dPriorities.Add Item:=LOW_PRIORITY, Key:="1" dPriorities.Add Item:=BELOWNORMAL_PRIORITY, Key:="2" dPriorities.Add Item:=NORMAL_PRIORITY, Key:="3" dPriorities.Add Item:=ABOVENORMAL_PRIORITY, Key:="4" dPriorities.Add Item:=HIGH_PRIORITY, Key:="5" dPriorities.Add Item:=REALTIME_PRIORITY, Key:="6" Dim aArgs As Variant If Command() = "" Then Syntax End End If aArgs = GetCommandLine(2) sProcess = aArgs(0) sLevel = aArgs(1) If sProcess = "" Or sLevel = "" Then Syntax End End If On Error Resume Next nLevel = dPriorities.Item(sLevel) If Err.Number = 5 Then ConsoleWrite "Invalid selection of runlevel." & vbNewLine Syntax End End If On Error GoTo 0 If nLevel = 0 Then nInstances = KillProcess(sProcess) If nInstances = 0 Then ConsoleWrite "No instances of " & sProcess & " found to kill" & vbNewLine Else ConsoleWrite nInstances & " " & IIf(nInstances > 1, "instances", "instance") & " of " & sProcess & " killed." & vbNewLine End If Else ConsoleWrite sProcess & IIf(SetPriority(sProcess, nLevel), _ " boosted", " NOT boosted") & _ " to priority " & sLevel & " (" & nLevel & ")." & vbNewLine End If End Sub

What's next with this thing? I suppose one could explore the possibility of influencing the lives of applications on other computers:

BOOST Skype.exe kill /C:GUEST_01

There's also the fact that the commandline parser doesn't properly handle double-quoted names. If an .exe had a space it its name, you wouldn't be able use BOOST on it.

Finally, here's a short batch file (killall.bat) I use for killing applications en masse. It was originally designed to get around the 'typing the /P and /L' issue, but I'm so used to using it now ...

@echo off :loop if %1@==@ goto done c:\bin\boost %1 kill shift goto loop :done

An example invocation:

killall excel.exe outlook.exe

© Copyright Bruce M. Axtens, 2007