There was a time, when only one process could be run at any given time, and the reigning operating system of those times was DOS. But, today there are a lot of processes running at the same time, and to track them we use Windows task manager or certain commands typed in the command prompt. Each method has its advantages of course, but here, we’ll mostly focus on the command prompt method.

For example, in Windows task manager, the PID (Process ID) column is not visible by default, while using a tasklist command in command prompt gives you a list of all running process as well as their corresponding identification number (PID). Naturally, if we can get a list of all processes, we can also end all those processes. We do this with the taskkill command. If we know the name of the process, e.g. notepad, then we enter the following: taskkill /IM notepad.exe, which will end the desired process but will first ask if we want to save changes. If a particular process is extremely bugging you i.e. it won’t end, then after taskkill command add /F. This will force the process to end, no questions asked. We can also end processes by their PID number, by entering taskkill /PID (the task ID number).

Now that we know how to find out the ID of the process, and how to end them, we can combine the two to get a really useful combination. For example, if we’re interested to find out which programs use the Internet we write netstat – no, and get a list of PIDs which we can simply end if we wish so.

All of the mentioned commands have a number of options and to see a list of them, enter the name of a specific command and add /? after that, e.g. tasklist /?

Tags | Command Prompt, Howto, Tips and Tricks, Windows