popen3 on windows

[John]

Hello.  Can anyone tell me how to get p.poll() or a workaound to work when 
using popen3() on windows? I use python 2.3.  I am trying to launch a 
command window to execute a command and then check periodically to see if 
the command has finished executing.  If it has not finished after a given 
amount of time, I want to close the process.  Is this possible on windows?

p = win32pipe.popen3('command') will create the tuple of files p, but none 
have a poll() attribute.  p[1].read() will hang up if the command has not 
finished.  Any suggestions?  The other alternative is that I use the above 
to start the command and then use another os command to see if my process is 
running in the background on windows.  If it is, then perhaps I can close it 
if it if need be.

Thanks.