Tasklist shows process but taskkill is unable to kill it, even as admin

I am trying to kill chrome on my computer. I ran command prompt as an admin and ran:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq chrome.exe"

This returned one item:

Image Name                     PID Session Name        Session#    Mem Usage
========================= ======== ================ =========== ============
chrome.exe                    8336 Console                    2    420,324 K

However, I couldn't kill it with /IM:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>taskkill /IM "chrome.exe" /F

Because it returned:

ERROR: The process "chrome.exe" with PID 8336 could not be terminated.
Reason: There is no running instance of the task.

So I tried to kill it with /PID:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>taskkill /PID 8336 /F

Which returned something similar:

ERROR: The process with PID 8336 could not be terminated.
Reason: There is no running instance of the task.

Attempting to kill it through task manager doesn't work either. How do I kill chrome without restarting my computer?

Jon

Posted 2017-02-26T20:27:27.870

Reputation: 8 089

Relevant Why sometimes Windows cannot kill a process?

– DavidPostill – 2017-02-26T20:57:24.450

AFAIK chrome has always several processes, is this problem persistent after a restart of the pc? You could try powershell.exe "Get-Process chrome | Stop-Process" – LotPings – 2017-02-26T21:13:00.243

@LotPings I was able to kill all other chrome processes with task manager but this one stuck around. – Jon – 2017-02-26T21:40:12.210

2Try: wmic process where name="chrome.exe" call terminate from an elevated as administrator command prompt and report back your results afterwards. – Pimp Juice IT – 2017-02-26T21:47:32.393

Frank with the big bank, did you find a solution yet or try any suggestions? – Pimp Juice IT – 2017-02-27T20:24:33.183

I left for a while and when I came back my keyboard stopped working, so I just restarted my computer. This killed the task so I'm not able to try anything any of the comments say. – Jon – 2017-02-27T21:59:06.220

@PimpJuiceIT That worked! I get this every time I use chrome so I will report back if LotPings works. – user5389726598465 – 2018-04-01T21:44:33.183

LotPings' cmd did not work. – user5389726598465 – 2018-05-06T09:48:37.813

4I tried this with a chrome process that hung after being launched by VS Code -- even after closing Code the process wouldn't die. When I call terminate it returns { ReturnValue = 2; }; and the process continues uninterrupted. – Coderer – 2019-04-09T08:41:12.600

Answers

I had a similar problem with multiple instances of conhost.exe that I could not terminate with taskkill, even giving the exact pid. I always got the same error, saying that there are no instances of the task.

So I did what Pimp Juice IT suggested in a comment above using the following command, which successfully killed all conhost.exe at once.

wmic process where name="conhost.exe" call terminate

bazem

Posted 2017-02-26T20:27:27.870

Reputation: 166

4I had the same problem with vmware-vmx.exe, and this method did not work either. The return value was 2. I also tried "delete" instead of "call terminate", but it said "Access denied". – kol – 2019-08-09T08:49:25.040

1It doesn't work for me. – Anbuselvan Rocky – 2020-02-16T19:35:42.007

I'm unsure of the actual ramifications of my method on the system but anytime I need to kill a process and am told Access Denied I right click the process, go to properties, the security tab, Advanced, Owner tab, and change the owner from TrustedInstaller to the account I want to kill it from. Haven't encountered anything it didn't work on yet.

Matt

Posted 2017-02-26T20:27:27.870

Reputation: 31

1This approach didn't work for me for stopping vmware-vmx.exe. I changed the owner to my user (the current user, which is an administrator user), I gave the user full control, but neither "taskkill /F ..." nor "wmic ... terminate" worked (from an elevated cmd). I stopped all vmware services, but that also did not help. – kol – 2019-08-09T09:04:09.673

choosing properties from the context menu seems to just be file or folder properties, not some kind of process properties. you are changing the NTFS ACL stuff on the .exe file itself by going to the security tab. – Dave Cousineau – 2019-12-25T01:24:31.780