Determine the PDH process names

When I browse the list, all of the items appear to match the expected naming.  Is there any chance that you are accidentally truncating the text yourself?

No, absoutely not. Because the process named "smtpmanualproc.exe" got truncated to "smtpmanualproc.ex", and sometimes I saw the truncated names as such "xxxxxx." without the "exe". It turned out the process names was "xxxxxx.exe" and got truncated by removing only "exe" not the dot. At first, I thought that there were a certain length below which the ".exe" was truncated and above it the full name was cut off to a certain length (no matter the extension, like the two examples mentioned above), but then I saw the very long name which was truncated the "standard way": ripped off the ".exe". That perplexed me, indeed.

Try to list the processes the way the task manager does that. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682623.aspx ("Enumerating All Processes") and the sample code it comes with:

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <tchar.h>
#include <psapi.h>
 
void PrintProcessNameAndID( DWORD processID )
{
    TCHAR szProcessName[MAX_PATH] = TEXT("<unknown>");
 
    // Get a handle to the process.
 
    HANDLE hProcess = OpenProcess( PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION |
                                   PROCESS_VM_READ,
                                   FALSE, processID );
 
    // Get the process name.
 
    if (NULL != hProcess )
    {
        HMODULE hMod;
        DWORD cbNeeded;
 
        if ( EnumProcessModules( hProcess, &hMod, sizeof(hMod), 
             &cbNeeded) )
        {
            GetModuleBaseName( hProcess, hMod, szProcessName, 
                               sizeof(szProcessName)/sizeof(TCHAR) );
        }
    }
 
    // Print the process name and identifier.
 
    _tprintf( TEXT("%s  (PID: %u)\n"), szProcessName, processID );
 
    CloseHandle( hProcess );
}
 
void main( )
{
    // Get the list of process identifiers.
 
    DWORD aProcesses[1024], cbNeeded, cProcesses;
    unsigned int i;
 
    if ( !EnumProcesses( aProcesses, sizeof(aProcesses), &cbNeeded ) )
        return;
 
    // Calculate how many process identifiers were returned.
 
    cProcesses = cbNeeded / sizeof(DWORD);
 
    // Print the name and process identifier for each process.
 
    for ( i = 0; i < cProcesses; i++ )
        if( aProcesses[i] != 0 )
            PrintProcessNameAndID( aProcesses[i] );
}

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I wonder about how you are determining that this truncation exists.  What method do you use to obtain the list in which the truncation occurs?

It occurs to me that the "friendly name" is actually the end result of a much longer name that includes the local computer, the directory path in which the image file resides, and so forth.   Perhaps that longer name hit some maximum and was truncated by the naming logic.  

Check out that possibility by tracking down the full path of the executable that ends up with one of these truncated names.  See if you can see a pattern (very long path name, computer name with and embedded apostrophe, etc.)