I'd like to write a little app to loop through a directory of powerpoint presentations. I figure a likely solution would perhaps require simply running powerpoint for say 30 mins and then killing it before running powerpoint again with another presentation.
The idea is that it would be unmanaged and other people could simply drop a new powerpoint file in the directory and it would eventually be displayed. My target deployment is to an LCD TV in a hallway at the office so the PC is unmanned.
Starting powerpoint via an application is easy, the sticking point at the moment is how to kill a running powerpoint (started from the same app).
Well well, I've found one solution for the command line (easy for most programming languages):
As far as I know, all MS Office apps can be remote-controlled using Visual Basic or some other language. That might be a more flexible and cleaner approach than the "start and kill" you are trying.
See for example this article: Automate Office PowerPoint 2007 with Visual Basic 2005.
OpenOffice.org can similarly be remote-controlled. See e.g. the OpenOffice.org BASIC Programming Guide.
Of course, if you really want to kill PowerPoint.exe, just use the Windows API. There's a call to kill a process. Here's the docs for .net: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.process.kill.aspx
There is certainly a similar function to invoke from C/C++ in the Windows API.
This is certainly easily enough done programmatically, including the random selection of the next presentation. Try asking the question over at Stack Overflow, which is dedicated to programming.