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How to kill process on remote computer?

In Windows, we can kill processes running on a remote computer using the taskkill command. We can specify process id/image file name/user name to identify the processes that need to be killed. Below you can find the syntax for each of the cases with examples.

Kill remote process using process id.

The syntax for this case is as below

Taskkill /S remoteServer /u userName /PID processId

Example:

c:\>taskkill /S 10.132.79.23 /u administrator /PID 5088
Type the password for administrator:******

SUCCESS: The process with PID 5088 has been terminated.

We can as well specify FQDN name of the computer for /S option. We can add /P switch to the above command, to specify the password in the command itself. This will allow the command to be executed from a batch file, without any user interaction.

Kill remote process using image name

We can use filter option (/FI) to specify the image name. The syntax is as given below.

taskkill /s remoteServer  /u userName /FI "IMAGENAME eq filename"

For example, if I need to kill all command window processes, I would run the below command.

taskkill /s 10.132.79.23 /u administrator /FI "IMAGENAME eq CMD.EXE"

If you need to kill outlook process, the command would be:

taskkill /s 10.132.79.23 /u administrator /FI "IMAGENAME eq OUTLOOK.EXE"

Kill processes executed by a particular user

The command is similar to the previous case with one change. Instead of ‘imagename‘, now we use ‘username‘ in the filter argument.

taskkill /s remoteServer  /u userName /FI "USERNAME eq userLoginId"

Viewing the list of processes on remote computer

We can get the remote processes list using tasklist command.
To get list of all the processes, the command is :

tasklist /s remoteServer /u userName

To list the processes running a particular image file:

TASKlist /S remoteServer /u userName /FI "IMAGENAME eq filename"

Example: To get the list of processes running cmd.exe on the remote computer 10.132.79.23, the command is:

c:\>Tasklist /S 10.132.79.23 /u administrator /FI "IMAGENAME eq CMD.EXE"
Type the password for administrator:******

Image Name                     PID Session Name        Session#    Mem Usage
========================= ======== ================ =========== ============
cmd.exe                       4272                            3      2,336 K
cmd.exe                       4448                            3      2,276 K
cmd.exe                       5008                            1      2,392 K
cmd.exe                       4228                            0      2,032 K
cmd.exe                       2344                            0      2,024 K
cmd.exe                       5552                            0      2,028 K
cmd.exe                       2936                            0      2,024 K
cmd.exe                       3776                            1      6,248 K
12 comments… add one
  • Ricardo Calles

    You are the real mvp.

  • Charles

    Everything seems to be working but even when typing the correct password it keeps saying that the username or password is correct.

    C:\>taskkill /s 192.168.200.253 /u Reception /FI "IMAGENAME eq App1.exe"

    the correct name is Reception, ive tried it without the capitol R and ive also tried it the way specified below but i still keep getting the same error.

    C:\>taskkill /s 192.168.200.253 /u 192.168.200.253\Reception /FI "IMAGENAME eq App1.exe"

    Any guess why its saying the username or password is incorrect?

    • InChargeOfMe

      Charles, have you tried it without the username option?

    • Todd

      I don’t know if this will work but you can try the following:

      /u .\reception

      That should specify the local user on the remote machine. I hope it helps!

  • Fred

    Same issue as Charles for me. When typing the correct password it keeps saying that the username or password is correct.

    tasklist /s SMA-ATTC /u Sylvie

    Without username option the response is “ERROR: The RPC server is unavailable”

    • Gav

      I has the same issue at first until I used the domain admin account, I know you’ve probably checked already but just make sure that account has admin rights. Also try opening cmd as administrator too.

    • Thomas

      I try to get the processes from remote machines and have no issue when the remote machine is a Windows 7 system. But for Windows 10 systems I always get the error that username or password is incorrect. My command is
      TASKLIST /S machine /U user /P password /FO csv /FI “imagename eq javaw.exe”

      The used user has admin privileges on the machine. I double checked the password many times, I also tried “/U .\user” and I also tried starting the console with admin privileges. The result is always the same and I have this issue only with remote Windows 10 systems.

      Any experience or hints with this constellation?

  • Ajit M. Patel

    I am receiving message “can not sign into Google IMAP. I have used outlook kill.bat which was working but does not work anymore? Anybody knows how to fix this?

  • abdulmoiz

    you can try way.

    Taskkill /S ip address /u user /p password  /IM "cmd.exe"
  • Joshua

    Using the IP as domain works if the user is LOCAL to the remote PC.

    Probably the domain is something totally different, try to look into the PC properties to find out the domain and uses is as /U DOMAIN\User

    • Hans

      You mean when sm1 is not part of a domain…. please be precies.
      You don’t need the /u domain user… you dont need to specify a user at all if it is not a terminalserver…

  • David

    This works for me

    taskkill /s computername /f /im “mspaint.exe”

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