Visual Basic Online Course

February 12, 2014

How to make sure that an Application is Running and Installed

Visual Basic Online Course - Tips

When you create a Visual Basic 2010 or generally a VB.Net application that relies on another VB.Net application for example an Updater.exe application, you will have to code both sides in order no to enable the user to run Updater.exe without the existence of the Main application, and in order to do so, you will have to make sure that :

1) Your Main application is Running.

2) Your Main application is Installed.

3) Your Main application does exist in the installation folder.

After making sure of all the above points, then you can compile your updater.exe file with your Main Application knowing that updater.exe won't run alone, especially if you're sending updates to the Main application for the user to receive using Updater.exe.

Here are the Codes to do so :

1) VB 2010 Get list of all installed applications

	'Visual Basic Online Course
	'VB 2010 Make sure application is installed

	Imports Microsoft.Win32
	Public Class Form1

	Private Sub Form1_Load(sender As System.Object, _
	e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
	GetInstalledApps(ListBox1)
	End Sub
	Function GetInstalledApps(ilst As ListBox) As String
	Dim DestKey As String = _
	"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\"
	For Each App As String In _
	Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(DestKey).GetSubKeyNames
	ilst.Items.Add(App)
	Next
	Return ilst.Items.ToString
	End Function
	End Class

view raw gistfile1.vb hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2) VB 2010 Get list of all running applications

	'Visual Basic Online Course
	'VB 2010 Get list of all running applications

	Function GetAllRunningApps(ilst As ListBox) As String
	'For every process which is running on the computer
	For Each p As Process In Process.GetProcesses
	'If it doesn't have a title
	If p.MainWindowTitle <> String.Empty Then
	ilst.Items.Add(p.ProcessName)
	End If
	Next
	Return ilst.Items.ToString
	End Function

view raw gistfile1.vb hosted with ❤ by GitHub

3) VB 2010 Make sure application exists

	'Visual Basic Online Course
	'VB 2010 Make sure a file exists

	Function AppExists() As Boolean
	Dim AppPath As String = ("C:\folder\sample\app.exe")
	If IO.File.Exists(AppPath) = True Then
	Return True
	Else
	Return False
	End If
	End Function

view raw gistfile1.vb hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Thank you for reading, download VB 2010 Project from here

♥ Here are some online Visual Basic lessons and courses :

Search This Blog

Visual Basic Online Course