kirsbo/Getting description from a process in VB.NET.md

## Getting description from a process in VB.NET.md

      
    Raw
  

              Getting description from a process in VB.NET.md
            
          
    Authored in 2010
The process object contains a lot of different information about the process in question, however it lacks the "description" of a process.
To see the description of a given process, hit CTRL+ALT+Delete and start the task manager. From there navigate to "Processes" and look under the "Description" column on the far right. This description is typically the easiest way to identify an application. You would think the process name would be the most obvious choice to identify an application, but this name is not always obvious.
For example, the Visual Studio 2010 process is called "devenv". Not very telling. The description of the process on the other hand is much more usable: "Microsoft Visual Studio 2010". That one doesn't leave much to the imagination, and typically this is what you are after if you are trying to identify an application based on a process.
As mentioned the process object lacks the description of a process. This is because the description is actually not stored in the process, but rather in the file itself. Getting the description is rather simple, but as mentioned, we cannot get it directly from the process object. Instead we have to use a FileVersionInfo object which resides in the System.Diagnostics namespace.
Private Sub WriteProcessDescription()
dim processDescription as string
Dim objProcess=GetProcessFromSomewhere() 'You will have to replace the mock "GetProcessFromSomewhere" function, with a reference to a process or to a method which returns a process reference.

Dim processFileVersionInfo As System.Diagnostics.FileVersionInfo = FileVersionInfo.GetVersionInfo(objProcess.MainModule.FileName)

processDescription = processFileVersionInfo.FileDescription

Debug.Write("The process description is: " &amp; processDescription)
End Sub
In the above code we first need a process object, for the process we wish to know the description of. For getting the process object for the currently active application, read the previous article (link in the top of this post).
Once we have the process object, we create a FileVersionInfo object based off the process' Filename property (objProcess.Mainmodule.Filename). We then simply extract the description from the FileDescription attribute of the FileVersionInfo object to a variable, and write the content of that variable to the immediate window.