61

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
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8 Answers8

47

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
Pang
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bazem
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12

If the process was started from Visual Studio, it's possible that the debugger crashed, but VS still somehow has an attachment to the process, keeping it from being able to be killed. Just shutting down Visual Studio will also shut down the rogue process, in this case.

Elezar
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5

I've narrowed down one cause of this issue. If you close a program whose executable is located on an external (or probably any) drive that has become "stuck", then the process will become stuck in this half-closed state, presumably waiting to read or write to the stuck drive before completely ending.

I can tell that the drive is "stuck" by attempting to change to the drive at the command line, where it will just hang indefinitely and never switch to the drive. (Similar thing should happen in an explorer window.)

As one comment indicated, when in this stuck state, the wmic to call terminate solution results in a return value of 2.

Disconnecting the problem drive from USB seems to immediately solve the issue; the stuck process disappears and the command line manages to finish switching drives. Plugging my drive back in brings the drive back to working order.

I'm not sure if this means there is a problem with the drive or not.

Dave Cousineau
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4

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
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2

In my case of chrome.exe being unkillable, I had to pause my Macrium Reflect image backup.

Dakusan
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1

I was facing the same issue. An instance of "java.exe" was listening to a few ports. Error which I was facing!

Following steps doesn't work for me:

  • End task using "Task Manager".
  • Killing task "Taskkill /F /PID".
  • Deleting %temp% files.
  • System "Restart/Shut Down" using "Window > Power > Restart/Shut Down".

What worked for me was "Switching off the laptop by pressing the power button for few seconds".

Don't know how but the ports were released and "java.exe" was not there in the task manager list.

user3350549
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0

I had the same problem: Could kill all but one chrome process. Cmd Taskill failed with "there is no running instance...". "WMIC process..." returned 0 but didn't work. What worked for me, was ending Malwarebytes. I imagine this is similar to the VS debugger issue. So try bouncing your antivirus software.

LdaQuirm
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0

I had a similar problem when I upgraded to Windows 11. Taskkill stopped working, but I found a solution. Open a cmd window as administrator and run the command from there. Press the wnd key, search for cmd, press Ctrl-shift enter and it opens with administrative privileges. From that console the taskkill command works.

Bob_T
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