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Using the Stop-Process Cmdlet

Terminating a Process

Stop-Process enables you to terminate a process (or processes). You can indicate the processes you want to kill either by specifying the process ID or by specifying the process name. For example, this command stops the process with the process ID 3512:


Stop-Process 3512

To stop a process by process name, use the -processname parameter followed by the process name (minus the file extension). For example, to terminate all instances of Notepad use this command:


Stop-Process -processname notepad

And, yes, Stop-Process accepts wildcard characters, too. For example, this command terminates any instances of Notepad, as well as any other processes whose names start with note:


Stop-Process -processname note*
Stop-Process Aliases
  • spps

  • kill