taskkill doesn't kill process

windows taskkill
Jeff M picture Jeff M · Dec 19, 2014 · Viewed 13.6k times · Source

I will sometimes get a process such that if I run taskkill /im the_process.exe /f /t, then it won't kill it, because: ERROR: The process with PID 6492 (child process of PID 5788) could not be terminated. Reason: There is no running instance of the task.

But if I open Task Manager and click End Process, then it goes away. Why does task manager work but taskkill not? I need to be able to kill the process programically, so I need to find a CLI command that will successfully kill this process.

I've googled around but I haven't found a working solution yet.

Answer

BenV136 picture BenV136 · Mar 18, 2016

Also, if are debugging the process under Visual Studio, you will get this exact situation. You need to detach the debugger or terminate the process from the debugger.

Related questions

Restarting explorer.exe only opens an explorer window

The Problem In one part of a batch file (kind of, see Extra Information) I need to restart Explorer, so I use the, tried-and-tested method of taskkill /f /im explorer.exe >nul explorer.exe Then this happens explorer.exe …

Read More
how to kill a program by process name using cmd in windows 8?

it seems that whenever i open a program in windows 8, the process name is WWAHost.exe i would like to be able to do something like TASKKILL /F /IM notepad.exe and terminate a specific process by name if i …

Read More
Windows Batch file - taskkill if window title contains text

I want to write a simple batch file to kill a process that contains certain text in the window title. Right now I have: taskkill /fi "Windowtitle eq XXXX*" /im cmd.exe And that works, except what I want to …

Read More