{"id":71283,"date":"2004-10-06T13:47:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-06T13:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2004\/10\/06\/how-can-i-tell-which-scripts-are-running-on-a-computer\/"},"modified":"2004-10-06T13:47:00","modified_gmt":"2004-10-06T13:47:00","slug":"how-can-i-tell-which-scripts-are-running-on-a-computer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/how-can-i-tell-which-scripts-are-running-on-a-computer\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can I Tell Which Scripts are Running on a Computer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hey, \n

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I tell which scripts are running on a computer?

— NW<\/P>\"Spacer\"\"Hey,\"Script<\/A> \n

Hey, NW. This is a question we\u2019re always a little reluctant to answer, because there\u2019s a 50-50 chance you\u2019ll be disappointed with what you hear. If you are running Windows 2000 (or a previous version of Windows), the answer is pretty straightforward: you can\u2019t. A script such as this one – which looks for all processes running under Cscript.exe or Wscript.exe – can tell that scripts are<\/I> running on a computer:<\/P>

strComputer = “.”\nSet objWMIService = GetObject(“winmgmts:” _\n    & “{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\\\” & strComputer & “\\root\\cimv2”)\nSet colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery _\n    (“Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = ‘cscript.exe'” & _\n        ” OR Name = ‘wscript.exe'”)\nFor Each objItem in colItems\n    Wscript.Echo objItem.Name\nNext\n<\/PRE>\n
However, this script can\u2019t tell you the names of those scripts. In fact, as far as we know, nothing built into the operating system can identify the individual scripts running on a Windows 2000 computer; even Task Manager reports only the process names (Cscript.exe and Wscript.exe).<\/P>\n
If you\u2019re running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, however, then we have a different – and better – answer for you. With Windows XP a new property – CommandLine – was added to the Win32_Process class. As the name implies, CommandLine tells you the actual command used to start a process. For example, suppose you started a script by typing cscript my_script.vbs<\/B> at the command prompt. The CommandLine property for that script will be this:<\/P>
cscript my_script.vbs\n<\/PRE>\n
In other words, now you know that script named My_Script.vbs is running on this machine.<\/P>\n
But what if you don\u2019t use the command prompt to start a script, what if you double-click the file icon in Windows Explorer and run the script under Wscript? No problem. Say you double-click the file C:\\Scripts\\My_Script.vbs; you\u2019ll get back a CommandLine value like this:<\/P>
C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\WScript.exe “C:\\Scripts\\My_Script.vbs”\n<\/PRE>\n
As you can see, we get the path to the Wscript executable file along with the path to the script that\u2019s actually running. Now that\u2019s more like it, huh?<\/P>\n
At any rate, if you\u2019re running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, here\u2019s a script that will do the trick for you:<\/P>
strComputer = “.”\nSet objWMIService = GetObject(“winmgmts:” _\n    & “{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\\\” & strComputer & “\\root\\cimv2”)\nSet colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery _\n    (“Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = ‘cscript.exe'” & _\n        ” OR Name = ‘wscript.exe'”)\nFor Each objItem in colItems\n    Wscript.Echo objItem.CommandLine\nNext\n<\/PRE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I tell which scripts are running on a computer?— NW Hey, NW. This is a question we\u2019re always a little reluctant to answer, because there\u2019s a 50-50 chance you\u2019ll be disappointed with what you hear. If you are running Windows 2000 (or a previous version of Windows), the answer is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,87,3,5],"class_list":["post-71283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-operating-system","tag-processes","tag-scripting-guy","tag-vbscript"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I tell which scripts are running on a computer?— NW Hey, NW. This is a question we\u2019re always a little reluctant to answer, because there\u2019s a 50-50 chance you\u2019ll be disappointed with what you hear. If you are running Windows 2000 (or a previous version of Windows), the answer is […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}