Windows: Kill a service that Windows Task Manager does not stop 2


In some cases, Windows Task Manager cannot stop a certain service. When the user right clicks on the service and selects the Stop Process option, the status of the service becomes Stopping but never actually stops. This happens when the developer of the service did not handle properly the signal instructing the service to shut down properly.

A way to stop it by force is to use the taskkill command with the help of the task manager. Press at the same time the keyboard keys Ctrl+Shift+Esc this will show the task manager. In the new window, switch to the tab Services. Find the service you want to stop and copy from the column PID the process ID number of the service. In the following example, if we wanted to kill the WinVNC4 service we would copy the number 1828.

TaskKill-Manager

Then, press at the same time the keyboard keys Windows+R that will pop up the Run Command screen. In the input line type the following:

taskkill /pid PID

and replace the PID with the PID we copied from the task manager before. In our example the input will become:

taskkill /pid 1828

and then hit the OK button.

Run-TaskKill

This post is also available in: Greek


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2 thoughts on “Windows: Kill a service that Windows Task Manager does not stop

  • Ukpaul

    All the methods mentioned on this page didn’t work.
    After getting killed several instances of the dashost.exe pops back with a different pid.

    • George

      What you mention does not mean there is a problem with the method.
      It means that some other application is restarting the one you are killing.
      You need to find the parent application of that and kill it as well.