Kill Background Process

[Rodney Hicks]

FWIW, I use FF and have not experienced what Gary is experiencing. I assume that Voice Dictation has a similar set of 'what to say' for different conditions like Speech Recognition does, but there could be slight differences in the syntax. For example, "Start Listening" from Speech Recognition might be "Begin Listening" in Voice Dictation. I'm shying away from testing the Voice Dictation because I haven't had many issues with Speech Recognition and I don't want to start any.
Gary are you sure that the Speech Recognition is completely shut down while using Voice Dictation? I did find at one time that the Speech Recognition would become active willy-nilly, but that was in the early days of using it and I don't remember just what steps I took to make it quit.

[Gary Beene]

Howdy, Eric!

Yes, I do have it installed but have not used in quite some time.

[Eric Pearson]

FireFox and voice recognition don't play well together, so just using FF on the same PC can cause problems, and I thought I remembered that you use it.

[Gary Beene]

Howdy, Eric!

No - there's no browser involved. This has to do with using Voice Dictation in a PowerBASIC app, such as this in-work demo:

#Compile Exe
#Dim All
%Unicode = 1
#Include "Win32API.inc"
#Include "TlHelp32.inc"

Declare Function RtlAdjustPrivilege Lib "NtDll.dll" Alias "RtlAdjustPrivilege" _
(ByVal PrivilegeIndex As Dword, ByVal EnableIfTrueElseDisable As Long, _
 ByVal ThreadIfTrueElseProcess As Dword, ByRef WasAlreadyEnableIfTrue As Long) As Long

Enum Equates Singular
   IDC_Speech = 500
   IDC_Clear
   IDC_TextBox
   IDC_Hide
   IDC_Kill
End Enum

Global hDlg As Dword, SpeechON As Long

Function PBMain() As Long
   Dialog Default Font "Arial Black", 14, 0
   Dialog New Pixels, 0, "gbSpeech",300,300,500,350, %WS_OverlappedWindow To hDlg
   Control Add Button, hDlg, %IDC_Speech,"Speech", 10,10,100,25
   Control Add Button, hDlg, %IDC_Clear,"Clear", 120,10,65,25
   Control Add Button, hDlg, %IDC_Hide,"ReSize", 10,50,100,25
   Control Add Button, hDlg, %IDC_Kill,"Kill", 120,50,100,25
   Control Add TextBox, hDlg, %IDC_TextBox, "", 10, 90, 230, 150, %ES_MultiLine Or %ES_WantReturn
   Dialog Show Modal hDlg Call DlgProc
End Function

CallBack Function DlgProc() As Long
   Local w,h As Long
   Select Case Cb.Msg
      Case %WM_Command
         Select Case Cb.Ctl
            Case %IDC_Speech
               TerminateProc "speechruntime.exe"
               TerminateProc "textinputhost.exe"
Sleep 500
               SpeechON Xor=1
               Control Set Focus hDlg, %IDC_TextBox
               If SpeechON Then ToggleSpeech
            Case %IDC_Clear
               Control Set Text hDlg, %IDC_TextBox, ""
               Control Set Focus hDlg, %IDC_TextBox
            Case %IdCancel : Dialog End hDlg
            Case %IDC_Hide : HideBar
            Case %IDC_Kill
               TerminateProc "speechruntime.exe"
               TerminateProc "textinputhost.exe"

         End Select
      Case %WM_Size
         Dialog Get Client hDlg To w,h
         Control Set Size hDlg, %IDC_TextBox, w-20, h-100
      Case %WM_Destroy
         If SpeechON Then ToggleSpeech
   End Select
End Function

Sub ToggleSpeech
   keybd_event(%VK_LWIN, &H45, 0, 0)
   keybd_event(%VK_H, &H45, 0, 0)
   keybd_event(%VK_H, &H45, %KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0)
   keybd_event(%VK_LWIN, &H45, %KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0)
End Sub

Function TerminateProc(zFileName As WStringZ) As Long         'Pierre
 Local ProcEntry As PROCESSENTRY32
 Local hSnapshot As Dword
 Local hProc     As Dword

 hSnapshot        = CreateToolhelp32Snapshot(%TH32CS_SNAPPROCESS, %NULL)
 ProcEntry.dwSize = SizeOf(PROCESSENTRY32)
 If Process32First(hSnapshot, ProcEntry) Then
   Do
     If LCase$(ProcEntry.szExefile) = LCase$(zFileName) Then
       hProc = OpenProcess(%PROCESS_TERMINATE, %FALSE, ProcEntry.th32ProcessID)
       If hProc Then
           If TerminateProcess(hProc, ByVal %NULL) Then
             Function = %TRUE 'Success
           Else
             CloseHandle(hProc) 'Not terminated, do clean up
           End If
       End If
       Exit Do
     End If
   Loop While Process32Next(hSnapshot, ProcEntry)
 End If
 CloseHandle(hSnapshot)

End Function

Sub HideBar
   Local w,h As Long, pt As Point, hWin As Dword
   Desktop Get Client To w,h
   pt.x = w/2 : pt.y = 10
   hWin = WindowFromPoint(pt)
   SetWindowPos GetParent(hWin), %HWND_NoTopMost, 0,0,200,200 ,%SWP_NoMove
End Sub

[Eric Pearson]

Are you using FireFox?

[Gary Beene]

Howdy, Eric!

Yep. I've also clicked on the microphone in the Voice Dictation bar. When the bar is frozen, neither action works to get Voice Dictation working again.

There is also a roughly 8s timeout after which the bar will go inactive. In that case, "Start Listening" does not work. I'm assuming Start Listening is supported by the Speech Recognition, not the Voice Dictation app.

I've seen posts elsewhere on the web from folks who have seen the same problem.

I have also seen the Voice Dictation bar tell me that the service is not available and that I need to try later - server issue of some kind, I suppose. But that is different than the freeze that I have occasionally seen.

[Eric Pearson]

When Windows Voice Recognition freezes, have you tried saying "start listening" ?

[Gary Beene]

Howdy, MCM!

No, I was wondering if there are any OS level concerns about using TaskKill. I haven't read of any, but TaskKill seems to have enough power to be cautious with it.

It could be worrisome like code that deletes a folder - you want to be sure you don't accidentally delete c:\windows!

In post #38 of the link Anne mentions, Pierre gives a quite useful function that shuts down a specified EXE. Anne's comment aside, I don't know if his function is any more or less reliable than TaskKill.

The information I've read suggests that some apps are resistance to TaskKill but if it works once on the app, it will always work. I've not seen that mentioned in any MSDN articles.

[Michael Mattias]

Are there any caveats with using TaskKill to close the apps from with my PowerBASIC app (shelling to CMD to get acces to it).

If you are worried about all the typing involved, it only takes three lines of source code to use TerminateProcess()*..

   GetProcess
   TerminateProcess
   CloseHandle

* Now, to use EITHER TerminateProcess() or SHELL() **CORRECTLY** you need to add the error handling code... which makes the actual "do it" code in either case virtually moot.

And the error-handling is a heck of lot easier when using TerminateProcess()... because it RETURNS a success/fail code!

[Dale Yarker]

Doing Ctl F on linked page for "Taskkill" yields zero hits.

So, while Taskkill may be unreliable, you've offered nothing to support that conclusion.

Also, no mention of a problem at MSDN:
taskkill | Microsoft Docs

Again, you are offering advice without even reading the source you mentioned, or the authorative source.

Cheers,

[Anne Wilson]

Gary
It is better to use Terminate process than Taskkill as the latter is unreliable

https://forum.powerbasic.com/forum/u...647#post743647

The following function listed there will do the job cleanly :

FUNCTION TerminateProc

[Gary Beene]

On a side note, the Windows Voice Dictation app is known to freeze on occasion.

It runs as a background process called "Microsoft Text Input Application", which I can kill using Task Manager but would rather do it programmatically.

Using CMD with TaskList, I can see there are two EXE's which seem to be involved - speech.exe and textinputhost.exe.

Are there any caveats with using TaskKill to close the apps from with my PowerBASIC app (shelling to CMD to get acces to it).