You can kill processes in Vista if you have enough privileges to do so. If Windows is hanging at logoff/shutdown, you may have to force it to power off by holding your power button in for 5 That isn't true. In that case, a reboot is most likely the only resolution. Be careful, because Windows depends on multiple processes/services to run & you could really mess things up if you kill the wrong process/service.īut, as I mentioned at the beginning, there are some that just can't be killedâ„¢. Now, from within process explorer, you should have access to kill more processes. For example, you can launch process explorer from the new command prompt and process explorer will be running with SYSTEM privileges (and will show that in it's windows title as. Programs launched from that new command prompt will also run as that user. You can check this by typing this at the prompt: Where HH:MM is at least one minute in the future from when you hit enter.Īnd at 8:31 a command prompt will be launched as "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM". Having said that, you can run a command prompt at LOCAL SYSTEM account privileges by typing the following in a command prompt:
One example is when a driver doesn't cancel an I/O request. But be careful, killing processes this way may cause data loss with the application that was terminated (such as if you were using a text editor or Microsoft Word).įirst of all, not all processes can be killed in Windows, even if you have LOCAL SYSTEM account privileges (built-in local service account NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM). You should be able to re-open the application again. The process WILL terminate freeing your computer from application hell. (just substitute 1680 with your PID number that you want terminated). Then open up a command prompt (click on Start \ Run and enter cmd in the run box) and type the following command:.Now the next time you have an application that is hanging, and it's process will not end from Task Manager, make note of the process PID number in Task Manager.If it is not visible, click on View \ Select Columns… and make sure PID (Process Identifier) is checked and select OK. Next open Task Manager (right click on the taskbar then select Task Manager ) and make sure the PID column is visible (may need to use horizontal scroll bar to scroll to the right to see PID column).
The reason for this is that pskill will be in your executable environment path so you can just type the command, with out specifying the full path to the folder and file location.
Download PsTools from Microsoft site, and unzip to your desktop.To use PsKill, you want to get things setup first: PsKill is bundled with Sysinternals PsTools which is a collection of command line tools for Windows computers. PsKill requires no installation and is a stand alone executable that is run from the command line. What you need is a utility that can kill and terminate stubborn processes, the first time, using PsKill from Microsoft Sysinternals. But that's too risky and more times than not will cause loss of data or system boot problems. Well, having pesky processes, that refuse to terminate and continues to hog CPU cycles, can be frustrating to the point where you just want to hit the power button and shut down.