To terminate or end a running process in Windows, we can use the “Taskkill” command. Here’s how to use it:
Open the Command Prompt:
- Press the Windows key.
- Type “cmd”.
- Select the “Command Prompt” app from the search results.
Identify the process that we want to terminate:
To view a list of running processes, type the following command and press Enter. Locate the process ID (PID) of the process want to end. Take note of the PID value.
tasklist
Terminate the process using Taskkill:
In the Command Prompt, type the following command and press Enter
taskkill /PID [PID]Replace “[PID]” with the actual process ID noted earlier.
- If we know the name of the process want to terminate, use the following command instead:
Or we can search with find command to specific image or process.
tasklist | find /i "process_name"After finding the process name, we can kill
taskkill /IM [process_name]Replace “[process_name]” with the actual name of the process want to end (without the square brackets).
Optionally, we can force the process to terminate by adding the “/F” parameter to the command. The system will attempt to terminate the specified process. If successful, we will see a confirmation message.
taskkill /F /PID [PID]For example, i want to kill whatsApp. See image below.
Please note that terminating certain critical system processes or processes associated with important applications can lead to system instability or data loss. Exercise caution when using the Taskkill command, and make sure to terminate only the processes we are confident about.
