Hi there all, I hope someone can help me with our issue we are having. We have a major issue with a process that we can not kill and the only way to get rid of the process is to reboot the machine. I have tried killing it from the normal task manager but no joy. I have tried killing it using the taskkill /F command from a command prompt and no joy. The command reports as sucessful but the process remains. I have tried to start task manager with system rights by calling "psexec -s -i -d taskmgr" and attempting to kill the process but no joy I have tried killing it from Process Explorer but again the process remains. Nothing I do will kill this process. Even logging off and logging back on will not kill this process. Using Process Explorer I notice that there is on stubborn thread that is in the Wait:Executive state. I have tried to kill this thread using Process Explorer but again no joy. We are using Windows Server 2008 R2 64-Bit. The server is brand new and windows is freshly installed. Now heres the thing. We have brought two identical servers from Dell with the same specs and the same OS installed and I can not replicate this issue on the other server. Only on this server, under certain circumstances does this server process hang and can not be restarted! I have also changed the compatability mode by setting it the process to "Windows 2003" but this has not helped. I have noticed in Process Explorer that DEP is turned on but im not sure this has got any bearing on the issue ot not. Please, can someone help??

I have used a trick with scheduler for some time. Schedule an interactive task with SYSTEM permission. Open Task manager and try to kill the process. (It would be interesting to use Process Explorer to find possible dependences.)

Hi Milos, It seems that this funcationality was removed in Windows 2008 and Windows 7. You can now, no longer schedule a task and have it run under the user account where you can interact with it. so this command: schtasks /create /ru system /sc once /st 14:11 /tn test1 /tr cmd.exe /it will start cmd.exe under the SYSTEM process but it has no window and can not be interacted with!!!

by the way: schtasks /create /ru system /sc once /st 13:16 /tn test1 /tr "taskkill /F /PID 1576" /it did not work.. The process still remains!!!!!!!

Thank you Milos. The process in question is SchOPC.exe. It is a 3rd party OPC Server that we use to communicate to devices in the field. I also believe it is called into existence via COM. I dont know if that helps. I will try the GUI setting/NT Authourity\System setting as you suggest and get back to you with my findings..

Hi Adrian 1. Is this software compatible with operating system? 2. Is it possible to start OPC server with lower priority 3. I would recommend "srossposting" to the OPC server vendor forum or address the support.

I tried your suggestion of modifying the scheduled task via the GUI but still no joy! In answer to your other questions, this software ran fine on Windows Server 2003. I have also set the compatability to Server 2003 also. I will try starting the server with a lower priority to see if that helps. Can I ask, what would the side effects of doing this be??

Hi, We are also having the same issue. We could not kill a process from task manager and the only way to get rid of the process is to reboot the machine. I have tried all you have tried to kill the process. Ours is also windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit. Please help if you have any resolution. Thanks

Any solutions?