How to Kill a Process in Command Prompt
To kill processes on your computer, you would normally use the Windows Task Manager. The Windows Task Manager is a program designed to help you manage the processes running on your computer. Although the Task Manager is sufficient for most...
Part 1 of 2:
Viewing Processes Currently Running on Your Computer
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Picture 1 of How to Kill a Process in Command Prompt Start Task Manager. Press the Ctrl key, the ⇧ Shift key, and the Esc key in consecutive order at the same time to open Task Manager. -
Picture 2 of How to Kill a Process in Command Prompt View the names of the running processes and identify the problematic process. Click the Processes tab in Task Manager and find the name of the process that you want to kill.- Windows 8/8.1 users should click the Details tab.
- If a program that is currently running on your screen is frozen and you want to kill it, an easy way to find its name is to click the Applications tab (Processes tab in Windows 8/8.1), right click the window's name, then click Go to process (Go to details in Windows 8/8.1).
- If the Task Manager window does not display any tabs, double-click in the indicated space in the window to show them.
Part 2 of 2:
Killing Processes Currently Running on Your Computer
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Picture 3 of How to Kill a Process in Command Prompt Open the Start menu. Press the ⊞ Win key. -
Picture 4 of How to Kill a Process in Command Prompt Start Command Prompt as an Administrator. Right click the first result that appears in the Start menu and click Run as Administrator.- If a User Account Control dialog appears, click Yes on it.
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Picture 5 of How to Kill a Process in Command Prompt Type taskkill /f /im into Command Prompt. -
Picture 6 of How to Kill a Process in Command Prompt Space at least once after completing the previous step, type a quotation mark, type the name of the process you want to kill, then type another quotation mark to top it off. -
Picture 7 of How to Kill a Process in Command Prompt Kill the process. Press the ↵ Enter key.- Command Prompt should display a message similar to SUCCESS: The process "example.exe" with PID 0000 has been terminated.
Update 04 March 2020
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