From: Gavin Kistner <gavin@...>
Date: 2005-05-24T21:35:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Killing a Process started with Kernel.system

On May 23, 2005, at 11:40 PM, Martin aus Chemnitz wrote:
> Under Windows, I want to start an external program and kill it on  
> exitting my Ruby script.
>
> begin
>   $t = Thread.new { system("everlasting") }
>   ...
> ensure
>   $t.kill
> end
>
> does not stop the everlasting program, it stops $t, not its child  
> processes. Such a command is urgently needed!

Here's a way to kill any process using Win32OLE:

require 'win32ole'

class WIN32OLE
     def to_a
         a = []; self.each{ |p| a<<p }; a
     end
end

# Find the process for the player
mgmt = WIN32OLE.connect('winmgmts:\\\\.')
process = mgmt.InstancesOf("win32_process").to_a.find{ |proc|  
proc.name =~ /myapp.exe/ }
process.Terminate