How to end unresponsive processes that can't be taskkilled in Windows?

Question

How do I kill an unresponsive process or task in Windows when it becomes completely unresponsive (window becomes a ligt grey, cursor a rotating blue ring)?

• Clicking [X] or trying to end process in taskmgr has no effect [status is unresponsive].
• Task can't be killed using Process Explorer [procexp] or with any of the following:

  TaskKill /f /pid %pid%
  TaskKill /f /im %exec.exe%
  

  Stop-Process -Force -Name $name
  

Answer 1

To end unkillable processes, use WMIC [Windows Management Instrumentation Console] in cmd or powershell, replace the variables with the PID/name of the process to kill:

• cmd (variable: %pid%):

  WMIC Process where ProcessID=%pid% delete
  

• powershell (variable: ${name}):

  WMIC Process where Name="${name}.exe" delete
  

Answer 2

You can give a try to use this code in a batch file :

@echo off 
Mode 90,3 & color 0B
Title Killing All Applications with Status equal to NOT RESPONDING
Taskkill /f /FI "STATUS eq NOT RESPONDING"
pause

---

EDIT :

With Powershell you can do something like this :

Clear-Host
While ($True) {
$DateTime =$Null
$DateTime = (get-date).ToLocalTime().ToString("dd/MM/yyyy @ HH:mm:ss")
Try {
$Processes = Get-Process -EA Stop 
$nProcesses = @($Processes | ? { $_.Responding -eq $false })
#$nProcesses
} catch {            
    Write-Error "Failed to query processes. $_"            
 }            
    if($nProcesses) {            
        foreach($nProcess in $nProcesses) {            
            $nProcess | select ID,Name, MainWindowTitle,Path
            Stop-process -Force $nProcess        
    }            
} else {            
  Write-host "$DateTime - No non-responding processes found" -ForegroundColor Yellow            
 } 
 Start-Sleep -s 300
}