It appears that Windows 8 has broken the taskkill command in part at least (actually, I think it is more likely a broken ability to set the debug attribute, which in prior Windows versions allowed taskkill to kill programs even if in a different security context; but I don't know exactly how to test that or prove my hypothesis).  When attempting to kill a process that is hung on exit (e.g., attempted a normal exit from the program, but it hangs and fails to exit, and continues to consume system resources), there appears to be no way to terminate the application/service, and an "access denied" error is generated even though run from the administrator command prompt.

I have had this happen now many times with chrome.exe (which seems to have lots of issues with Windows 8 in general, but especially when exiting), as well as Skype.exe (a perpetual problem child program under any system).  It is repeatable if you can get any program to crash/hang on exit:

(1) start a bunch of chrome.exe windows, especially ones that require resources like scripts, and then attempt to exit chrome window by window - this will cause chrome to crash on exit 5/10 times.  Confirm hung process via ctr-shift-esc and see that at least one chrome task is still running (chrome window may or may not still be visible)

(2) From the administrator command line: "taskkill /IM chrome /F" which will give the access denied error.

(3) psutils is also unsuccessful: pskill chrome /F also gives same error (run from administrator command prompt)

As I understand prior Windows releases, there is a debug attribute that was set by these particular utilities (under Windows 7 and earlier) which allowed taskkill and pskill to kill processes even when the task manager failed to do so.  It seems that something is broken under Windows 8 now in that regard.

Any ideas how to fix?  is there a registry fix?  Another utility that works under Windows 8?

Hi,

I tried the command in Windows 8, it works with no problem. I can even kill explorer.

Hi,

I tried the command in Windows 8, it works with no problem. I can even kill explo

Hi,

If it is Antivirus, the story may be different. Antivirus may use some methods to protect itseft from killing by an application.

Hi,

@JeffN:

Maybe if you explain the situation with more details, the answer could be easily found (and fixed).

Here is what happened to me when I tried it.

@Juke Chou:

Working scenario:

Win 8 (64 bit), killing a "Responding" task which runs in 32bit mode -> Kill successful

Not working scenario:

Win 8 (64 bit), killing a "Not Responding" task which runs in 32bit mode -> Task is INVINCIBLE.

Hi,

@JeffN:

Maybe if you explain the situation with more details, the answer could be easily found (and fixed).

Here is what happened to me when I tried it.

@Juke Chou:

Working scenario:

Win 8 (64 bit), killing a "Responding" task which runs in 32bit mode -> Kill successful

Not working scenario:

Win 8 (64 bit), killing a "Not Responding" task which runs in 32bit mode -> Task is INVINCIBLE.

This happens in Server 2012 as well.

This is a major issue Microsoft!

Every time I  have a task that has frozen, this task cannot be killed with ANYTHING. Not taskkill, not process explorer, not process hacker.

Needs to be fixed ASAP!

I have the same problem. It isn't solved until now.

It is a big problem for me, that that funktion is broken.

Pleas fix it as soon as possible, like Dacidi74 already said a month ago.

• Proposed as answer by erosenninjpx Thursday, April 10, 2014 3:45 AM

Its taskkill -f -im <processname>.<extension>

EXAMPLE:

taskkill -f -im tree.com

(tree.com is the tree command written in ms-dos)