Kill Processes From The Command Prompt In Windows 7

By Aun on Nov 16 2009 8 Comments

We all at one time or another have used the Task Manager to kill some particular process, no doubt the  task manager  offers a great way to manage processes but have you ever tried to kill multiple processes with the task manager? You can kill only one process at a time. Windows 7 lets you manage processes from the command line too through which you can kill multiple processes simultaneously.

Open the Command Prompt in the Administrative mode and run the tasklist command, it will show you a list of all the running processes.

Command Prompt

Now you can kill any particular process by running the  Taskkill command. For example to kill Firefox, run the command as:

Taskkill /IM firefox.exe /F

where /F is used to kill the process forcefully. You can also kill any particular process by using it’s ID, the tasklist command displays the process ID’s as well (you can see the PID column in the screenshot). To kill any process using it’s ID, run the command as:

Taskkill /PID 364 /F

Now to kill multiple processes simultaneously, run the above command with the PID’s of all the processes.

Taskkill /PID 266 234 222  /F

It’s that easy. Enjoy!

  • c0d3r

    Fantabulous :D Definitely a must have in a g33ks armory :P

    Thanx nako :D

  • [c0d3r]

    Fantabulous :D Definitely a must have in a g33ks armory :P

    Thanx nako :D

  • c0d3r

    Fantabulous :D Definitely a must have in a g33ks armory :P

    Thanx nako :D

  • http://joygoround.com K Jones

    access is denied… same as task manager said. IM THE ADMIN!!

    • Random guy

      If you are running on Windows Vista/7 make sure you start the command prompt as an administrator.

    • Draconus

      Usually when you use an administrator account and find a file/application that you don’t have permission to, the file/application is infected by malware that has removed all permissions to itself. (e.g. a rootkit)

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  • TJ

    Hello this works and all but when I try and close multiple ones at a time like it tells you to I get the error “ERROR: Invalid argument/option – ’3632′.” (3632 is the 2nd one and if i take it out it will give the 2nd one again)

    I tried “taskkill /PID 3708 3632 2204 2116 3640 3692 2088 /F” and it did not work but if I do them one by one it does work. Please help!

    • Aleksaander

      TJ, you should use this kind of command:
      taskkill /PID 3708 /PID 3632 /PID 2204 /PID 2116 /PID 3640 /PID 3692 /PID 2088 /F

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