How to view and kill tasks or process running in a remote server

Windows has several built in command line utilities for performing various tasks, and two tools are useful for remotely viewing and killing tasks from command prompt.They are “Tasklist” and “Taskkill”. 

If you open an admin command prompt (Press Start, type cmd, press Ctrl+Shift+Enter) and type tasklist, it will give you a list of running processes on your computer. We can use same command with some modifications to view the task manager of remote computer in our network from our machine.

To view Task manager of remote computer use below format in cmd prompt [with admin privilege] from our machine

Tasklist /S remote system (name or IP address) /U username /P password

Example: Tasklist /S  192.168.1.1 /U sysnet /P P@ss@0rd

To kill process of remote computer use below format

Taskkill /S remote system /U username /P password /IM ProcessName

Example: Taskkill /S 192.168.1.1 /U sysnet /P P@ss@0rd /IM malware.exe

NOTE: You have to use IP address or Hostname of your server and your AD username and password instead of  192.168.1.100 , sysnet and P@ss@0rd respectively 

Note: To kill the process you want,Add the process name (including .exe) or the PID number along with the “/IM” argument as above example. If it works a SUCCESS message will show. If the process doesn’t get killed, try to add /F to the end of the line to force the process to be terminated.

Note: Some processes cannot be terminated such as those which are system critical or security software etc.