How to Kill a Process in Command Prompt

The Windows Task Manager is a program designed to help you control processes running on your computer. You can create and kill processes or perform other various actions in Task Manager, but Task Manager might sometimes be insufficient for what you want to do. Some locked processes or frozen programs may not even terminate even if you attempt to kill them from Task Manager. When you encounter problems such as these, you're not out of options. A program in Windows called Command Prompt may help you. Although Command Prompt may seem primitive, it can perform various actions than Task Manager can't such as killing stubborn processes. If you want to kill a process on your computer using Command Prompt, read on!

Steps

Viewing Processes Currently Running on Your Computer

1. Start Task Manager. Press the key, the key, and the key in consecutive order at the same time to open Task Manager.
   
   
   
   


2. 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.
     
     
     
     
   
   
   
   

Killing Processes Currently Running on Your Computer

1. Open the Start menu. Press the key.
   
   
   
   


2. Type Command Prompt or cmd to search for Command Prompt.
   
   
   
   


3. 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 on it.
     
     
     
     
   
   
   
   


4. Type taskkill /f /im into Command Prompt.
   
   
   
   


5. 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.
   
   
   
   


6. Kill the process. Press the key.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   • Command Prompt should display a message similar to SUCCESS: The process "example.exe" with PID 0000 has been terminated.
   
   
   
   

Warnings

• Do not kill critical Windows processes using this method. If you kill a Windows-reliant process using Command Prompt, you might cause system instability or crashes.

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