Kill a process which says "Access denied"

Question

I have a process that I can't kill with either Task Manager or Process Explorer - I get the error "Access denied". The process isn't a Windows executable.

How can I kill it? Is there some tool I could use to override this protection?

I'm using Windows 7, 64-bit edition.

Answer 1

Kill a protected process?

http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/index.php

Works on Windows Server without admin rights! Yammie! :)

Answer 2

The taskkill and powershell (kill) methods didn't work for me; it still said Access Denied.

I had better luck with this:

wmic process where "name='myprocessname.exe'" delete

Answer 3

1. Download "Process Explorer".
2. On the process properties view, select the security tab.
3. Press the permissions button.
4. Press the advanced button.
5. If necessary, add yourself or a group you belong to.
6. Edit your permissions to include "Terminate". (you will need to already have the "Change Permissions" permission, or you are out of luck.)

In general, the need to kill tasks means somebody is not doing something correctly. I'd look for another solution to whatever problem you are facing. Perhaps if you told us more about that we could find a more graceful option?

Answer 4

None of the mentioned above tools helped in my case.

See https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-blog-archive/unkillable-processes/ba-p/723389.

Mark Russinovich shows there that there are cases when process can be almost impossible to kill.

Answer 5

Are you on a privileged account? Generally when you receive the "Access Denied" error even on an account with higher access, it is usually because you are trying to kill a service which is critical to the system's operation. Some applications on the other hand, such as VMWare, also implement their own "process protection", even for processes which are not vital to system operation.

If you are on a privileged account, you can give Sysinternals PsKill a shot, I've used it in the past to kill processes that gave me similar error messages. Be careful what processes you're killing though, it may make your system unstable.

Answer 6

You just need to give process explorer administrative privileges, no need of adding any account or not (if you're already an admin). There is no need of telling which processes to terminate or not or installing any other process manager (even I love Process Explorer).

Either:

• Right-click and "Run as administrator"

• Go to properties and then compatibility and select "Run as administrator"

Now it'll never say access denied.

Answer 7

Not sure the reason but using Sysinternal's Process Explorer and clicking at "Show Details for All Processes" from File menu solved the issue and allowed me to kill the service. Perhaps it switches to Admin mode only then.

Answer 8

1. Open Task Manager. Go to the Process Tab.
2. Right click on the process and click on Properties.
3. Click on the Security Tab and then click on Edit.
4. On the Permissions window click on the Add button to open the Select Users Group or Groups window.
5. On the Select Users or Groups window you can enter the usernames of the accounts you want apply the restrictions.
6. Select your username and set the permissions to deny/allow by checking the checkbox under the deny/allow option.
7. Click on Apply and then Ok.

via

Answer 9

It is also possible to kill commands using the Windows PowerShell, use get-process to list the processes running and then use stop-process with the ID of the task to kill it. Stop-Process.

get-process Unkillable.exe
stop-process 1234

You may find you need to launch the Windows PowerShell specifically as an administrator.

Answer 10

Try using APT(Advanced Process Terminator), kills any process easily.

Answer 11

you need to open a shell with system permissions to kill the process! Sysinternal's psexec is your friend:

psexec -s taskkill /im MyTask.exe /f

or if the process is acually a service:

psexec -s sc stop MyService