TaskKill: Bulk End Process in Task Manager

A very neat command line tool I was not aware of is TaskKill. I’ve recently been having an issue with an automated task in Open Office causing the soffice.bin file to stall and cause a massive backup in Task Manager processes. Up until now I was manually right clicking to end process but this tool makes the task a lot easier.

In CMD window:

C:\>taskkill /?

TASKKILL [/S system [/U username [/P [password]]]]
         { [/FI filter] [/PID processid | /IM imagename] } [/T] [/F]

Description:
    This tool is used to terminate tasks by process id (PID) or image name.

C:\>TASKKILL /F /IM notepad.exe /T

The line above will kill off all instances of notepad.exe

• /F – Force the killing of the process, I don’t want to be alerted of unsaved items
• /IM – Image name, use the image name to delete rather than process id etc.
• /T – Kill all child processes too.