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How can I kill processes that won't close?

T

Thetech

Senior member
I've been having an odd problem lately where A program (mainly seamonkey or thunderbird) crashes, but when I try to end the task it will confirm it but never close. Is there anyway I can kill a process even when the system won't?
 
Not other than by using "End Process Tree" on the process's image name, listed in the Processes tab in Task Manager.
 
Originally posted by: xtknight
Not other than by using "End Process Tree" on the process's image name, listed in the Processes tab in Task Manager.
Click to expand...

Darn, I had tried that and it didn't work either.

 
It's usually because the application is holding onto a file or other type of "handle" that they can't let go of, or didn't let go of properly. I don't know what Firefox would be holding onto that would be so important that you wouldn't be able to kill it, but who knows...
 
Sockets are handles and if the process is currently "in" the kernel then it won't be killable until it returns from whatever call is hung. But I also think that pskill has a better chance of actually killing something than taskmgr since taskmgr has some built-in crap that tries to protect you from yourself. For instance copy notepad.exe, rename it to winlogon.exe then run it and try to use taskmgr to kill that process. It won't let you because any executable named winlogon.exe is protected.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Sockets are handles and if the process is currently "in" the kernel then it won't be killable until it returns from whatever call is hung. But I also think that pskill has a better chance of actually killing something than taskmgr since taskmgr has some built-in crap that tries to protect you from yourself. For instance copy notepad.exe, rename it to winlogon.exe then run it and try to use taskmgr to kill that process. It won't let you because any executable named winlogon.exe is protected.
Click to expand...

I downloaded a copy of pskill, but I couldn't figure out how to use it. Would you please explain to me how to use it?

 
usage: pskill [- ] [-t] [\\computer [-u username] [-p password]] <process name | process id>

-

Displays the supported options.

-t

Kill the process and its descendants.

\\computer

Specifies the computer on which the process you want to terminate is executing. The remote computer must be accessible via the NT network neighborhood.

-u username

If you want to kill a process on a remote system and the account you are executing in does not have administrative privileges on the remote system then you must login as an administrator using this command-line option. If you do not include the password with the -p option then PsKill will prompt you for the password without echoing your input to the display.

-p password

This option lets you specify the login password on the command line so that you can use PsList from batch files. If you specify an account name and omit the -p option PsList prompts you interactively for a password.

process id

Specifies the process ID of the process you want to kill.

process name

Specifies the process name of the process or processes you want to kill.

============

For exmaple if you look in Task Manager and click on the Processes Tab, it will show you the image name or the "process name" so for exmaple if you want to kill internet explorer then you would find the process name to be iexplore.exe so the pskill command would be:

pskill \\computer name -u username -p password iexplore.exe

if it's on your local machine then do not need to put in computer name and you may not need the UN and PW parameters.
 
Originally posted by: nweaver
it's a command line tool....learn it, love it, CLI is the future.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't CLI be the past?😕 GUI is the present, and something else is THE FUTURE!
 
lol...not quite...but it might be more efficient.


Hillarious sig though.

TheStu...yeah, he was just kidding. But CLI is much faster and more efficient then GUI...ummm....typically anyway...depending on the scenario.
 
GUI may be what consumers are using, but admins will never give up their CLI...ever.

If CLI is in the past, why has MS been beefing UP thier CLI interface? I don't really expect the normal user to use it, but any power user should learn it...it is MUCH faster the n GUI tools to do almost anything. The other reason is that it's easier to push things out as a script then to log into each station and click three boxes when you are managing 800 PC's.
 
It sounds too tempting to not ask for more details so, could someone please point me to their favorite/best resource for learning to use the command line in Windows?
I have very little exp. with command lines but I would like to learn more. My past exp. include dos, which I hated because I could never get anything done with it.
 
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