# taskkill /f not working.



## tobeon (Aug 7, 2007)

Hello All,

I am having a problem with processes that cannot be killed even with TASKKILL /F (although that does return "SUCCESS" even though the process is still running)

Short of restarting the computer does anyone have any other suggestions for any other fail-safe way to totally kill a running process?

Thanks very much,

Tom

(Windows Server 2008)


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## Wand3r3r (Sep 17, 2010)

Malware/virus's just reinstate the task. You need to follow correct procedure to remove them.


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## buzza24 (Mar 27, 2008)

Simply killin the task often wont be enough and will self-start. Booting the PC into Safe Mode is a good start to getting rid of infections. 

Personally i like to install Malwarebytes and the run it in Safe Mode. Ccleaner is also a good tool for clearing out infections from tenp files.


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## LMiller7 (Jun 21, 2010)

Some processes, such as security software and malware, go to considerable lengths to make killing them as difficult as possible. Taskkill and similar software is likely to fail in these situations. Specialized task killers (which I will not mention) do exist but none are foolproof. Even if the process is successfully killed it may restart.

Note that forcibly killing a process can lead to data loss or have other system implications.


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