Process32FirstW function (tlhelp32.h)

Article
08/09/2022

Retrieves information about the first process encountered in a system snapshot.

Syntax

BOOL Process32FirstW(
  [in]      HANDLE            hSnapshot,
  [in, out] LPPROCESSENTRY32W lppe
);

Parameters

[in] hSnapshot

A handle to the snapshot returned from a previous call to the CreateToolhelp32Snapshot function.

[in, out] lppe

A pointer to a PROCESSENTRY32W structure. It contains process information such as the name of the executable file, the process identifier, and the process identifier of the parent process.

Return value

Returns TRUE if the first entry of the process list has been copied to the buffer or FALSE otherwise. The ERROR_NO_MORE_FILES error value is returned by the GetLastError function if no processes exist or the snapshot does not contain process information.

Remarks

The calling application must set the dwSize member of PROCESSENTRY32W to the size, in bytes, of the structure.

To retrieve information about other processes recorded in the same snapshot, use the Process32Next function.

Examples

For an example, see Taking a Snapshot and Viewing Processes.

Note

The tlhelp32.h header defines Process32First as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows XP [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows Server 2003 [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	tlhelp32.h
Library	Kernel32.lib
DLL	Kernel32.dll