How do I find out command line arguments of a running program?

Question

I'm looking for a tool or method to find out what command line parameters have been passed to a program, for example when it was run by another program (launcher-application scenario).

How can the question "[_Get the complete command line of a process_](https://superuser.com/q/403423/516482)", from Mar 21 '12, be a duplicate of this question here from _Apr 22 '12_? — Gerold Broser, Sep 12 '21 at 12:44

Andy E · Answer 1 · 2012-12-15T20:36:42.253

123

You can do it without Process Explorer, too, using Windows' WMI service. Run the following from the command prompt:

WMIC path win32_process get Caption,Processid,Commandline

If you want to dump the output to a file (makes it a bit easier to read), use the /OUTPUT switch:

WMIC /OUTPUT:C:\Process.txt path win32_process get Caption,Processid,Commandline

edited Dec 15 '12 at 20:36

answered Dec 15 '12 at 17:29

Andy E

1,353
1
9
11

4

@Pacerier: I'm not sure to be honest ;-) I think it came from digging around the WMI docs and playing around because I needed to use WMI for something at the time. – Andy E Jan 20 '15 at 09:06
3

Which WMI docs are you referring to? – Pacerier Jan 22 '15 at 03:48
[These ones](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa394372(v=vs.85).aspx). – Andy E Dec 07 '15 at 12:13
6

This was a very helpful command line method for getting the command line of a running process. In my case, I was able to tweak this slightly to get output just for a specific process: WMIC path win32_process where "caption='cmd.exe'" get Commandline – chriv Mar 30 '16 at 17:32
4

Great, and the where clause actually support some SQL features, e.g., where "name like 'cmd.%' – zhaorufei Aug 31 '16 at 06:25
can't fetch java cmd call for some reason ... – Yordan Georgiev Oct 20 '16 at 07:23
Running in cmd.exe the command "WMIC /OUTPUT:C:\Process.txt path win32_process get Caption,Processid,Commandline" complains "Invalid file name." So instead I use "WMIC /OUTPUT:Process.txt path win32_process get Caption,Processid,Commandline" to output to the current directory. – Yuci Nov 18 '16 at 12:36
1

Just pointing out that if WMIC is called from the powershell quotes must be used around the get parameters: WMIC path win32_process get "Caption,Processid,Commandline" – capitano666 Dec 01 '16 at 13:52
2

Here's an example of SQL like filtering in the where clause: `WMIC path win32_process where "name like '%cmd%'" get Caption,Processid,Commandline` – rleelr Nov 12 '19 at 08:45

score 94 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 25 '20 at 13:05

94

You can do that using Process Explorer.

Just hover with your mouse over a process to see the command line arguments used to start it:
List of "chrome.exe" processes

Alternatively, you can open the properties of the process and inspect the command line right there:
Properties of a "chrome.exe" process

edited Feb 25 '20 at 13:05

Cristian Ciupitu

5,513
2
37
47

answered Apr 22 '12 at 14:39

Oliver Salzburg

86,445
63
260
306

2

That's really cool. – cutrightjm Apr 22 '12 at 15:23
2

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work with applications protected with WinLicense/Themida: http://www.oreans.com/winlicense.php Any other ideas? – Gepard Apr 22 '12 at 16:24
@Gepard: How do you know it doesn't work? Are you sure the application was, in fact, called with command line arguments? Either way, PE uses the *Windows way* of determining that information. Anything else would have to be custom-tailored to a specific application, I assume. – Oliver Salzburg Apr 22 '12 at 16:37
8

My bad, it didn't run PE elevated. It's working as intended. – Gepard Apr 22 '12 at 16:46
@OliverSalzburg, How did this program work? Can any normal C program achieve this? – Pacerier Jan 20 '15 at 03:17
@Pacerier I assume so. There's probably a Windows API to do this. I don't know the implementation though. – Oliver Salzburg Jan 20 '15 at 07:42
@OliverSalzburg, So it looks like a virus could go undetected even with this. – Pacerier Jan 22 '15 at 03:49
Does this still work? Process Explorer is/was my favorite Windows tool, but I can't get it working at all on two W10 machines. It's as if all rows are there but all columns have disappeared, and sometimes all rows disappear too. – Mark Jeronimus Jan 04 '21 at 14:52
@MarkJeronimus On my current computer with W10 professional y get the exe file properties, not the process, but I'm on an office computer and some functionalities may be restricted by the company directives on active directory. Andy's answer worked out for me using the WMIC command with /OUTPUT switch – Noman_1 Jan 03 '22 at 08:50
You still can highligh an entry and do Ctrl + C to get the content into the clipboard – Noman_1 Jan 03 '22 at 08:51

score 64 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 03 '15 at 07:28

64

One can also achieve that by using Task Manager.

Open task manager (by CTRL-SHIFT-ESC, CTRL-ALT-DELETE or any other method).

For Windows 7 (and probably Windows XP):

Go to "Processes" tab. The on the "View" menu, select "Select Columns...".
Check the checkbox of "Command Line" and click OK. (You may have to scroll down to find it)

For Windows 8:

Go to "Details" tab. Right-click on any of the columns (eg. Names, PID etc.) and select "Select columns".
Check the checkbox of "Command Line" and click OK. (You may have to scroll down to find it)

A column of Command lines of will be added to the currently displayed columns.

answered Oct 03 '15 at 07:28

Jeromy Adofo

741
5
3

This only shows what will fit in the visible window area, so it's not helpful for long commands. – Jesse Barnum Nov 09 '15 at 19:47
3

I don't really get you @JesseBarnum, one can always resize the column to have a complete view no matter how long the command line is, right? – Jeromy Adofo Dec 07 '15 at 00:35
1

Only if the window is wide enough for the size of the command. If the command is something like a Java process with a long classpath, that won't fit in the window width. – Jesse Barnum Dec 07 '15 at 16:03
1

Alright thanks, noted. I haven't had that problem though and by the way my task manager is scrollable - don't know about yours :-). I think if you can send me a sample program to try, that could settle it. – Jeromy Adofo Dec 18 '15 at 16:57
11

This is a vastly underrated answer, had no idea this was possible. – Hashim Aziz Mar 13 '17 at 23:34
1

@JesseBarnum is right, it does not work for really long command lines, the text is truncated at some fixed length even if you resize the column. My taskmgr is scrollable too, of course. – jmiserez Jul 12 '17 at 13:22
1

@JesseBarnum it shows the tooltip as you hover on the command line text, just like Process Explorer in the accepted answer – phuclv Jan 29 '18 at 10:07
8

I see a couple of comments above about the Windows Task Manager. Even if you set the 'Command line' column to show a Java process with a really long command line will get truncated. BUT, you can click on the row in the Task Manager and 'copy' (Ctrl-c) the whole row and paste this into a text editor to see the whole command line, no matter how long. – JohnD Feb 21 '18 at 02:43
That is an awesome find @JohnD! I thought copying was not possible because I didn't find it in the context menu after right-clicking. The only thing is that the copying is not working for a few processes, but I haven't figured out why yet. – Jeromy Adofo Feb 21 '18 at 11:29
2

Awesome! Had no idea that option was there. Now that I know I figured there's also a 'Command line' option to select when you right-click on the top-row under 'Processes' tab. – Neeraj May 01 '18 at 13:11
5

I like this answer best. It works with a standard windows installation (including windows 10). – Stragulus Dec 08 '18 at 16:04

score 12 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 26 '19 at 10:16

12

PowerShell to the rescue.

Find:

Get-WmiObject Win32_Process -Filter "name = 'perl.exe'" | where {$_.CommandLine -eq '"C:\strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe" t/Server_PreFork.t'}

And kill as bonus:

Get-WmiObject Win32_Process -Filter "name = 'perl.exe'" | where {$_.CommandLine -eq '"C:\strawberry\perl\bin\perl.exe" t/Server_PreFork.t'} | ForEach-Object { Invoke-WmiMethod -Path $_.__Path –Name Terminate }

You can run it from powershell directly or from a ps1 if you've got your system setup. I detail unrestricted script setup on i kill zombies with powershell as well as other powershell tricks...

edited Apr 26 '19 at 10:16

mwfearnley

7,172
5
26
38

answered Aug 07 '14 at 05:46

Dave Horner

253
2
7

1

Whoa... the kill part is quite dangerous, given the title of the question ;) Otheriwse a very neat answer ;) – Tom Aug 23 '17 at 14:14
1

Perfect! Thanks for it. Astuce : You can use $._CommandLine -match "" to filter process to kill – Chklang Jul 11 '23 at 05:22

Sil · Answer 5 · 2018-01-27T10:53:00.403

Previous answers are great in case the process is already running and is not going to terminate any soon. However If you need (as I did) to do this perhaps with processses start up multiple times and/or quickly terminate, or perhaps log occurences in a longer period of time, there is a way to this using Process Monitor.

Basically it logs various events in the system, in this case we can just filter the "Process Start" event and the name of the process we want to monitor, as shown below:

Then just keep the process monitor running and do whatever you do to get the process you want to log running. You can see in either the "Detail" column or the "Command line" column (depends on how you configure those) the command line arguments. For example:

Of course this way you can extract much more related information such as what is the working directory, what environment variables have been passed on the process, etc... Also it is easy to export the results into a file.

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 28 '20 at 22:00

I know that OP have asked a question regarding Windows 7 and there are some great answers around.

I was facing this issue in windows 10 and I did not want to user ProcessExplorer or any utility but rather an easy way to get the command line arguments of an FFMPEG process that was initiated by a Video Converting tool. But the steps apply to any process that is run using command line arguments.

Here is what I did.

Launch Task Manager >
Identify Process >
Right click the Process and click "Goto Process Details"
Right click on any column and select "Show Columns" and then check "Command Line Arguments" option > Click OK.
Then select the process you want the command line arguments for and then use Ctrl+C to copy all the data for that process (including the command line arguments)

Here are the screenshots for the steps.

Hope it helps someone. Best

score 2 · Answer 7 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:17

When using CygWin, if I start a Python process, this is an example of command line:

c:\CygWin\bin\python2.7.exe /usr/local/bin/sudoserver.py

But Process Explorer only sees the main exe:

Process Explorer not detecting full command line of Python process

(note the "path: [Error opening process message]" (see EDIT-1)). Same results for tasklist:

C:\>tasklist | find "python" /i
python2.7.exe                 5740 Console                    1    15.312 KB

So, the only trick I know until now, is finding it via CygWin Bash shell pgrep:

Luis@Kenobi /cygdrive/c/
$ pgrep -f -l server.py
5740 /usr/bin/python2.7 /usr/local/bin/sudoserver.py

It is useful to know this, as long as CygWin cohabits with no problems in Windows, and you can use it to run many POSIX and Python programs.

EDIT: In Windows you don't seem to need administrator priviledges for tasklist. In CygWin you will need them to be able to view an administrator's process (what seems more logical to me: the full command-line could have some parameters like passwords inside), so we must run the CygWin Bash in elevated Administrator Mode.

EDIT-1: This problem will not happen if you run Process Explorer as administrator. Thanks you for pointing, @Pacerier.

If you run as administrator you wouldn't be seeing `[Error opening process message]` — Pacerier, Jan 20 '15 at 03:20
You were right, @Pacerier . Too obvious to remember :-) . Thanks you. I have edited my post to reflect it. — Sopalajo de Arrierez, Jan 20 '15 at 03:30

score -3 · Answer 8 · answered Nov 02 '12 at 04:46

-3

go to run or goto start and search:

tasklist -m

tasklist -svc

answered Nov 02 '12 at 04:46

Zanardan

11
1

9

That does not show the calling command line. `/m` shows loaded modules (DLLs, etc.) and `/svc` shows services hosted in each process. – Bob Nov 02 '12 at 05:02

How do I find out command line arguments of a running program?

8 Answers8

Linked

Related