How to kill a process from the command line in Window

Here is how to kill a process from the command line in Windows.

First, you need to find the PID. To do this run the tasklist command: this will display all the applications that are currently running. If you know the .exe filename you can filter out the result list by using the /fi option. For example here is a command to find the PID for eclipse.exe:

C:\>tasklist /fi "IMAGENAME eq eclipse.exe"

Image Name                     PID Session Name        Session#    Mem Usage
========================= ======== ================ =========== ============
eclipse.exe                  13304 Console                    1    794,480 K

Once you have the PID you can run the taskkill command to close the application.

C:\>taskkill /PID 13304

if everything is going well, you should be able to see a message like:

SUCCESS: Sent termination signal to the process with PID 13304.

or, if something fails, you can get a message like:

ERROR: The process with PID 13304 could not be terminated.
Reason: This process can only be terminated forcefully (with /F option).

or, if you are not a local administrator, you will get a message like:

ERROR: The process with PID 13304 could not be terminated.
Reason: Access is denied.