I'm attempting to use boost::process to launch a command line tool called "catdoc.exe." Catdoc takes one argument (the path to a word document). Catdoc will then extract the text from the doc file and output it via standard error to the command line which I've redirected into a string below. So far everything works with the below code except instead of getting the text out of "a.doc" I get an error saying "catdoc cannot find codepage 1251" these codepages are saved in a directory called "charsets" which is saved in the same place catdoc.exe. The problem, I believe, is that the working directory is not set as Catdoc works fine (and finds the codepages) when I execute it manually from the command line, outside of my C++ code. My two questions are as follows: 1. Is there a way to set the working directory (and if so, will this fix my problem)? 2. Is there a way to set a time-out on the underlying process (ie. kill the process if it becomes unresponsive)? Thanks in advance for your help! My Code: using namespace boost; process::child start_child() { string exec = "catdoc.exe"; std::vector<std::string> args; args.push_back("C:\\a.doc"); process::context ctx; ctx.stderr_behavior = process::capture_stream(); return process::launch(exec, args, ctx); } string ExtractText() { string rawtext = ""; process::child c = start_child(); process::pistream &is = c.get_stderr(); std::string line; while (std::getline(is, line)) rawtext += line; return rawtext; } v/r -Keith