How to kill process windows cmd

We can kill a process from GUI using Task manager. If you want to do the same from command line., then taskkill is the command you are looking for. This command has got options to kill a task/process either by using the process id or by the image file name.

Kill a process using image name:

We can kill all the processes running a specific executable using the below command.

taskkill /IM executablename

Example:
Kill all processes running mspaint.exe:

c:\>taskkill /IM mspaint.exe
SUCCESS: Sent termination signal to the process "mspaint.exe" with PID 1972.

Kill a process forcibly

In some cases, we need to forcibly kill applications. For example, if we try to to kill Internet explorer with multiple tabs open, tasklist command would ask the user for confirmation. We would need to add /F flag to kill IE without asking for any user confirmation.

taskkill /F /IM iexplore.exe

/F : to forcibly kill the process. If not used, in the above case it will prompt the user if the opened pages in tabs need to be saved.

To kill Windows explorer, the following command would work

C:\>taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe
SUCCESS: The process "explorer.exe" with PID 2432 has been terminated.

The above command would make all GUI windows disappear. You can restart explorer by running ‘explorer’ from cmd.

C:\>explorer

Not using /F option, would send a terminate signal. In Windows 7, this throws up a shutdown dialog to the user.

C:\>taskkill /IM explorer.exe
SUCCESS: Sent termination signal to the process "explorer.exe" with PID 2432.
C:\>

Kill a process with process id:

We can use below command to kill a process using process id(pid).

taskkill /PID  processId

Example:
Kill a process with pid 1234.

taskkill /PID 1234

Kill processes consuming high amount of memory

taskkill /FI "memusage gt value"

For example, to kill processes consuming more than 100 MB memory, we can run the below command

taskkill /FI "memusage gt 102400"

More examples

Sometimes applications get into hung state when they are overloaded or if the system is running with low available memory. When we can’t get the application to usable state, and closing the application does not work, what we usually tend to do is kill the task/process. This can be simply done using taskkill command.

To kill Chrome browser from CMD

Taskkill /F /IM Chrome.exe

Kill Chromedirver from command line

Taskkill /F /IM Chromedriver.exe

To kill firefox browser application

taskkill /F /IM firefox.exe

To kill MS Word application(Don’t do this if you haven’t saved your work)

taskkill /F /IM WinWord.exe

Sometimes, the command window itself might not be responding. You can open a new command window and kill all the command windows

taskkill /F /IM cmd.exe

This even kills the current command window from which you have triggered the command.

Multitasking with many apps and programs in the background can become difficult to manage and kill the processes running in the background using just the Task Manager or even with tools like Microsoft Process Explorer. However, another way to kill tasks and processes is from the command line in Windows.

However, you can open the Task Manager, right-click the process, and then click “End Task” to kill off the process. You can also terminate a specific process from the Details tab in the Task Manager. Sometimes you encounter issues with the Task Manager itself. For times like these, you may need to kill a process using the command line, which includes both the Command Prompt and Windows PowerShell.

In this article, we show you multiple ways to kill a process in Windows using Command Line.

Why use the command line to terminate a process?

Although a normal user will not require killing processes using the command line, there are several use cases where command line tools are much better than their visual counterparts like the task manager. The following command line tools can be used in the following scenarios:

• Troubleshooting: Some processes are simply stubborn. They just stop responding and refuse to die. In such a condition, killing them forcefully using the command line is an easier and safer option.
• System administration: If you are a sysadmin, you should be a fan of command line utilities. These tools save a lot of work and time. You can run these commands remotely throughout your network to troubleshoot systems remotely.
• Script Automation: If you are a developer and need to start or stop processes in Windows, you will need these command line tools for automation.
• Virus prevention: If your system gets infected with viruses, it will simply not let you kill the compromised processes, as they will respawn upon kill. In this case, you can automate a monitoring process where the process is killed as soon as it starts.

There are several other use cases, but these are the most common ones.

How to Kill a Process from Command Prompt

You can kill the process in cmd using the taskkill command. However, you must either know its Process Identifier (PID) or the name of the process before you can end it.

To view and list the tasks and processes currently running on your computer, run the following command in an elevated Command Prompt:

Tasklist

Note either the name under the Image name column or the PID number of the task you want to kill. These will be used in the cmdlets to kill the respective process.

Once you have either the name or the PID of the task, use either of the following cmdlets to kill the process:

• Kill task using process name in Command Prompt:

  Replace [ProcessName] with the name of the process.

  taskkill /IM "[ProcessName]" /F

  

• Kill task using PID in Command Prompt:

  Replace [PID] with the Process ID.

  taskkill /F /PID [PID]

  

If you are using earlier versions of Windows, like Windows 7, Windows Vista or even Windows XP, you can use tskill command, which is similar to taskkill but limited in functionality. You just need to provide the process ID to kill a task using tskill command:

tskill process-id

Replace process-id with the actual process ID. For example,

tskill 1234

How to Kill a Process from Windows PowerShell

Similar to the Command Prompt, you can also kill processes using PowerShell. But first, we must get the name or the process ID for the process to kill.

To obtain a list of the running processes in PowerShell, run the following command in PowerShell with elevated privileges:

Get-Process

From here, note down the process name or the PID (in the ID column) of the process that you want to kill, and then use it in the following commands:

Note: Unlike the Command Prompt, Windows PowerShell shows no output once a process is killed.

• Kill task using process name in PowerShell:

  Replace [ProcessName] with the name of the process.

  Stop-Process -Name "[ProcessName]" -Force

  

• Kill task using PID in PowerShell:

  Replace [PID] with the Process ID.

  Stop-Process -ID [PID] -Force

  

How to Kill a Process using WMIC

Windows Management Instrumentation Command-Line (WMIC) is a useful command line tool to perform administrative tasks especially for sysadmins and power users. You can terminate the process using wmic command.

Please note all the below mentioned commands will only work if you open Command Prompt, PowerShell or Terminal as an administrator.

wmic process where "ProcessId='process-id'" delete

Replace process-id with the actual process ID. For example,

wmic process where "ProcessId='1234'" delete

You can also terminate the process using its name:

wmic process where "name='process-name'" delete

Replace process-name with the actual process name. For example,

wmic process where "name='Skype.exe'" delete

If there are multiple processes by the same name, this command will kill all of them. For example, the above mentioned command will delete all instances with the name Skype.exe.

How to Kill a Process using SysInternals PsKills

PsKill is a tiny tool that comes with the PsTools Suite by SysInternals. This is a command-line tool used to kill processes, both locally and remotely on other computers on the network.

Although it was designed for WindowsNT and Windows 2000 that did not include the other command-line tools (Killtask and Stop-Process), PsKill can still be used to end processes.

Learn how to manage processes and services on remote computers.

Use the following steps to download and use PsKill to kill tasks using the command line on a Windows computer:

1. Start by downloading PsTools.

   

2. Extract the contents of the PsTool file.

   

3. Launch an elevated Command Prompt and then use the CD cmdlet to change your directory to the extracted PsTools folder.

   CD [PathToPsTools]

   

4. Run the following command to list all the running processes:

   PsList

   

   Note down the name of the process that you want to kill.

5. Now use the following command to kill a process using its name:

   PsKill.exe [ProcessName]

   

As you can see from the image above, the respective process will be killed, and the associated service or program will be terminated.

Ending Thoughts

Even without the use of the Task Manager, there are multiple ways of killing a task or a process directly from the command line. You can even use these commands in scripts to end a Windows process.

On top of that, you can choose whether to kill a process using its name or its PID. Either way, Command Prompt and Windows PowerShell can be used with both native and external commands for this purpose. Not only that, but you can also use these commands in Windows Terminal for the same purpose.

If you are a sysadmin who wants quick and convenient methods to kill running processes, the given command line methods just might be the most convenient way of accomplishing it.

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By Ariel | Follow |
Last Updated July 27, 2023

A log of users are unclear about how to kill process CMD/PowerShell in Windows 10/11. Don’t worry. This post of MiniTool walks you through detailed steps on the PowerShell/CMD kill process operations.

Why You Need to Use Windows PowerShell/CMD Kill Process

As you know, the operating system will create a process for the executable file when you start running an app. This process contains the program code and its current activity. In addition, you can find the Process Identifier (PID) assigned by Windows to identify each process.

Sometimes you have to kill a process if an app is not responding or behaves unexpectedly, system resources are much occupied, or other reasons. When it comes to killing a process, most people may open Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc keys and then right-click the Process and select End task.

Tip: Also, you can navigate to the Details tab in Task Manager to check the Process ID (PID), Status, CPU, User name, and Memory usage.

Sometimes, however, Task Manager may run into various issues such as “end task not working”, “Task Manager not responding”, “Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator”, and so on. In this case, you can kill process CMD/PowerShell. How to make CMD kill process IN Windows 10/11? Let’s keep reading.

How to Kill Process CMD/PowerShell in Windows 10/11

This part will show you how to kill process Windows command line/PowerShell. You can choose one according to your preference.

# 1. CMD Kill Process

How to let CMD kill process in Windows 10/11? Here you need to use the taskkill command that allows a user to kill a task from a Windows command line by PID or image name. This command works like the “End task” option in Task Manager.

Here’s how to kill task CMD via the taskkill command. Since some apps may run as administrators, you need to open an elevated Command Prompt window to kill them. For that:

Step 1. Type cmd in the Search box, and then right-click the Command Prompt window and select Run as administrator. Then click on Yes in the UAC window to confirm the admin access.

Step 2. In the elevated command prompt window, type the following command and hit Enter to show all the currently running processes in your system.

tasklist | more

Step 3. To kill a process by its PID, run the following command. Here we take PID 1704 for example.

taskkill /F /PID pid_number

If you want to kill task CMD by its name, run the following command. For example, to kill the YourPhone.exe process:

taskkill /IM “process name” /F

If you want to kill multiple processes by their name simultaneously, run the following command:

taskkill /IM Process Name /IM Process Name /F

If you want to kill multiple processes by their PID simultaneously, run the following command:

taskkill /PID PID  /PID PID /F

If you want to learn more taskkill commands, you also can run the taskkill /? Command.

# 2. PowerShell Kill Process

In addition, you can make Windows kill process command line via PowerShell. Here’s how to do that:

Step 1. Type PowerShell in the Search box, and then right-click the Windows PowerShell app and select Run as administrator. Then click on Yes to confirm that.

Step 2. In the elevated PowerShell window, type the following command and hit Enter to show all the running processes on your system.

Get-Process

Step 3. If you want to kill a process by its name, run the following command.

Stop-Process -Name “ProcessName” -Force

If you want to kill a process by its PID, run the following command.

Stop-Process -ID PID -Force

About The Author

Position: Columnist

Ariel has been working as a highly professional computer-relevant technology editor at MiniTool for many years. She has a strong passion for researching all knowledge related to the computer’s disk, partition, and Windows OS. Up till now, she has finished thousands of articles covering a broad range of topics and helped lots of users fix various problems. She focuses on the fields of disk management, OS backup, and PDF editing and provides her readers with insightful and informative content.