How to Use Taskkill to End Processes in Windows

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Using the taskkill command to end Windows processes

Co-authored by Hannah Dillon

Last Updated: September 24, 2025 Fact Checked

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End a Process

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Force Close a Process

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End Child Processes

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End All Non-Responsive Programs

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Tips

Taskkill is a Windows Command Prompt (cmd) command that ends one or more tasks. It's kind of like ending a task with Task Manager, but from the command line.^{[1]
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Research source} Taskkill can also do things like forcefully end a program if it won't close normally, or it can terminate multiple programs at once. For most people, Task Manager is the best program to use, but knowing taskkill is useful if you are writing a program or if you need to do something more advanced. This wikiHow article will teach you how to use the taskkill command to force quit programs on your Windows PC.

Running the Taskkill Command in Windows

Type the "tasklist" command and find a program you want to end. Type "taskkill /IM [image name]" and hit Enter. Use " /F" at the end of the command to force-close the process, and type "/T" to kill all its child processes. To end all non-responsive programs, type "taskkill FI "STATUS eq NOT RESPONDING" /F."

Method 1

Method 1 of 4:

Ending a Process

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1
Open Command Prompt. To do this, type Command Prompt into the taskbar search bar, and then click on "Command Prompt" in the results.
- To start Command Prompt as an administrator, right-click it and select Run as administrator. You will need to do this to end any programs that are also running as administrator.
This will display all running processes on the computer.^{[2]
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Research source} It's important to run this command first so that you can find the process names of the ones that you want to terminate.

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3
Review the list. Review the task list to search for the program that you want to end. Look at the "Image Name" column specifically, since you will need this information to kill the task. The "Image Name" column is the first column.
- You will probably have to scroll down to review all of the processes since they won't fit all on one page.
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Kill the task. First, type in taskkill. Then, specify that you are killing the task based on its image name, so put in a space, and then type in /IM. After this, add another space and type the Image Name of the program that you want to end. For this example, notepad.exe will be the task that will be killed. Afterwards, press ↵ Enter. This will kill the task.
- For this example, the whole command would look like taskkill /IM notepad.exe.

Method 2

Method 2 of 4:

Forcefully Ending a Process

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Just like the previous task, you need to type in tasklist to view the running programs and to retrieve the image name.[Image:CMD Run Tasklist.png|center]]
You would first type in the command like you normally would. For example, to forcefully kill notepad.exe, you would type in taskkill /IM notepad.exe.^{[3]
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Research source} However, don't hit ↵ Enter just yet.
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Add /F to the end of the command. The "/F" argument tells taskkill that you want to forcefully end the process. Keep in mind that you have to add a space before adding this argument.^{[4]
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- After adding /F to the command, press ↵ Enter to run the command.

Method 3

Method 3 of 4:

Ending Child Processes

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1
Type in tasklist. Just like the previous two processes, you'll need to view the task list before you can kill a process. In this method, we'll go over how to end a process with child processes that could prevent it from ending. A common program type that creates child processes is Internet browsers.
- Adding the parameter to kill child processes can be helpful if using the /F parameter to forcefully kill a process doesn't seem to be working.^{[5]
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For example, if you wanted to end the Microsoft Edge process, you'd write taskkill /IM msedge.exe. However, don't press ↵ Enter yet.
If the process isn't responding, you can add the /F parameter to kill the process forcefully.
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Add the parameter to kill child processes. This parameter is /T. So, in this example, if you were forcefully killing Microsoft Edge, the command would look like taskkill /IM msedge.exe /F /T.
- After adding /T to the command, press ↵ Enter to run the command.

Method 4

Method 4 of 4:

Ending all Non-Responsive Programs

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This is the beginning of the command.
This specifies that you want to kill all programs that are not responding. Remember that you need to add a space after taskkill.^{[6]
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Add /F to the end. Since non-responsive programs will not close on their own, they need to be forcefully closed. Then, press ↵ Enter. This will end all non-responsive programs.^{[7]
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- Remember to add the space before typing /F.

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The taskkill command is not case sensitive

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There are many other things that taskkill can do, but most people will not need to use them. You can view all arguments for the taskkill command here.

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Be careful with the command prompt. Although taskkill cannot really harm your computer, other commands can cause damage. You can always see what a command does by typing the first part, and then typing in /? after it.

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