LabVIEW
how to get currently running application names on windows
There is only a small change someone will know how to do this in Phyton, and if they know, they might not even anwser since this is a LabVIEW forum...
To get further with this, I would seperate the involved issues. The LabVIEW solution is nothing more then a few API calls in the correct order. So the correct qestion to ask in a Phyton forum is: how do I call window API's (or how do I call these specific window API's, if you are feeling lucky).
I'm not sure if you understand LabVIEW, or if you are just asking this based on the thread's title, but if you do, I'd study the API calls in LabVIEW, learn how to call API's in Phyton, and combine the knowledge. Start with well documented, frequently used API's like MessageBox and things like that.
If you don't know LabVIEW, I could post the psuedo code here, but it's way off topic, so don't make a habit of it.
Regard,
Wiebe.
Search LabVIEW like a graph! 
MichaelTipton wrote:Like I said earlier, I have spent a long time researching this topic - in Python and other forums. During my google search, it turned up this forum. This is one of the first times I have EVER found a specific program that said it would list the APPLICATIONS under Windows. Since I don't have any software to open or run the example code, I simply asked IF there might be something in Python available. I actually do not know Python as yet, I am trying to teach myself this language. An yes, I have asked the same question in a Phython forum, and as yet I have had no response. When I saw an email saying I had a response in this forum, I thought someone was actually supplying me with an answer. Maybe some one else out there will have a solution.
With all due respect but you said earlier you tried 2 to 3 hours to do it. But 2 to 3 hours for something like this about accessing Windows APIs is not even much if you know exactly where to look for and what functions to use not to talk about having to find out about all these things first.
As to finding this kind of information there are many forums (of course mostly C programmer oriented) that show more or less complete applications that do this kind of thing too. Another very interesting source of information for such things is the Microsoft SDK for Windows and the MSDN site from Microsoft. Yes it is hard to find the right information in the huge amount of information from these two sources alone already but even much harder to get it from the whole internet. All I can say is learn some C programming and look at those examples.
I do know that there is a Python package called Win32API I believe which gives you quite an extensive set of Python funcitons that access the Windows API directly. I have never used it and in fact do not know a lot about Python programming itself. So it is for sure possible to access Windwos APIs from within Python and if the functions come in the Win32API package its even simple. Otherwise it might be a bit more of a hassle.
Rolf Kalbermatter
The VI returns the exact same list as task manager's Applications tab.
Wiebe.
Wiebe,
I was stuck on the same problem to get the names of running windows through LV. After searching on ni forum I found this List of applications.vi 
I used this VI in my application and it was really working fine. But after some time this VI gives an error, as shown in attachment, that LabVIEW memory is full. With this error, LV crashes. If I run .exe file of my application, it hung up. As I am new to LV, it is pretty hard for me to find the correct reason behind this error.
Any help or any solution to get rid of this error will be appreciated.
Thanks.
Amy,
It must be something specific to your application or system. I can run the Vi continuously without any memory increase or crashes. The most likely API call to crash is the GetWindowTextA call. It is tricky to use this between applications (getting names from other applications), see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/21/54675.aspx . It doesn't have any problems on my system, but you might have more processes, changing processes, or something else.
Are you sure it is this VI that hangs? If you run the VI itself, or build an executable with just this VI, do you have the same problems? Does the problem stops when you remove and\or simulate this VI?
Does the memory increase when you run the VI (is LV really out of memory)? You'll also get this message with specific pointer problems.
Can you reproduce it in any way? Can you make it happen, or stop it from happening?
Regards,
Wiebe.
