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How to Kill an Orphaned Process

Article ID: 197155 - View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q197155

SUMMARY

When a service terminates abnormally, "orphaned" child processes may remain. This article describes several methods to remove this kind of process.

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MORE INFORMATION

Method 1: The KILL Command

To remove orphaned child processes, use the kill command from the Resource Kit:

kill process name or id

-or-

kill -f process name or id

To obtain a list of processes and process IDs, use the Task Manager or the TLIST utility from the Resource Kit.

Method 2: The AT Utility

If neither of the commands described in the preceding section work, if the Schedule service is running on the computer in the Local System context, you may be able to terminate the process successfully by scheduling one of the preceding commands with the AT utility:

at time /interactive cmd /c kill -f process name or id

Method 3: The PVIEW Utility

If method 1 and method 2 are unsuccessful, use the PVIEW utility from the Resource Kit, Supplement 3, to adjust the permissions on the process and then kill it. You must be an Administrator to perform this task.

Note PVIEW may not run correctly in a Terminal Services session.

Start Pview.exe.
Click the target process from the list of processes.
Click Process in the Security pane, adjust the permissions of the process to give administrators (or the currently logged-on user) all accesses to the process, and then repeat this step for Thread security and Process Token security.
Use the kill command to terminate the process.

If none of these procedures work, you must restart the system to terminate the process.

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REFERENCES

For additional information about how this problem can arise, and foralternative solutions to the problem, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

142011

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/142011/EN-US/ )

How to Close a Remote Process by Using the Scheduler Service

138340

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138340/EN-US/ )

Trouble Quitting Program Started with AT.EXE Scheduler

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