Taskkill.exe: don't throw an error if the process is not running

Question

I'm running a Visual Studio post build event that shuts down IIS if it's still running after compilation:

taskkill /f /im w3wp.exe

The following works perfectly if IIS is still running, but throws an error if it has already stopped:

Error 1 The process "w3wp.exe" not found. xxx\EXEC

Is there a way to tell taskkill to ignore the problem if it can't find a matching running process?

score 33 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 13 '11 at 13:47

33

Instead of running one command, would running a small batch file work instead?

tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq w3wp.exe" 2>NUL | find /I /N "w3wp.exe">NUL
if "%ERRORLEVEL%"=="0" taskkill /f /im w3wp.exe

answered Jan 13 '11 at 13:47

Mokubai

95,412

Dustin Gamester · Answer 2 · 2019-01-07T18:06:39.440

30

The solution I found to this was to run

START /wait taskkill /f /im w3wp.exe

It returns a success from the START command, and any error thrown by TASKKILL is thrown in the new console window

edited Jan 07 '19 at 18:06

answered Jun 05 '12 at 17:04

Dustin Gamester

443

score 26 · Answer 3 · edited May 14 '16 at 00:01

26

This works well too:

taskkill /IM "w3wp.exe" /F /FI "STATUS eq RUNNING"

edited May 14 '16 at 00:01

techraf

4,952

answered May 13 '16 at 20:31

Richard Casavecchia

261

score 12 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:41

12

Or, this will just return an info message if not found:

taskkill /f /im w3wp.exe /fi "memusage gt 2"

Info from: here

edited May 23 '17 at 12:41

Community

1

answered Aug 12 '13 at 03:42

acarlon

221

score 7 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 25 '20 at 13:39

For a prebuild event in visual studio this worked for me:

taskkill /f /im scriptcode.exe 2>nul 1>nul
exit 0

see: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5806444/swallowing-errors-in-pre-build-steps-in-visual-studio-2010

I had some problems with status = running checks, process existed but did not have status = running. I was using that before.

score 5 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 27 '16 at 08:51

This is a one line solution.

It will run taskkill only if the process is really running otherwise it will just info that it is not running.

tasklist | find /i "w3wp.exe" && taskkill /im w3wp.exe /F || echo process "w3wp.exe" not running.

This is the output in case the process was running:

w3wp.exe           1960 Services                   0    112,260 K
SUCCESS: The process "w3wp.exe" with PID 1960 has been terminated.

This is the output in case not running:

process "w3wp.exe" not running.

PandllCom · Answer 7 · 2018-05-10T15:41:56.213

1

Forces the process to kill (if the process is running), and don't output any information.

The following command work fine.

taskkill /f /im w3wp.exe /t /fi "status eq running">nul

edited May 10 '18 at 15:41

answered May 10 '18 at 10:14

PandllCom

11

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 18 '22 at 10:45

1

If all you need is to not display the error, this works:

taskkill /im test.exe 2>nul

answered Jul 18 '22 at 10:45

Basj

2,143

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Mar 06 '20 at 16:30

Short Answer:

Append || exit 0

Details

I cannot test the exact case given, but I found this works:

pskill w3wp.exe || exit 0

The '||' says run the second command if the first fails. A ';' should work as well.

Additionally to totally silence a command use something like:

rem totally silent
rem order matters. Redirect then join
some_cmd 1>nul: 2>>&1

Taskkill.exe: don't throw an error if the process is not running

9 Answers9