With Windows 7 and the application called Process Explorer by SysInternals, I could kill or suspend virtually any active file.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case with Windows 10. Is there a workaround or is there a limitation in my Windows version 10 Home?
Sammy,
You can use MS SysInternals Process Explorer & the rest of the SysInternals Suite with Windows 10 just as you could with Windows 7.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/sys...nternals-suite
https://social.technet.microsoft.com...t=lastpostdesc
You have not said if there was a specific case of your being unable to kill something. Perhaps if you searched TenForums for that thing you might find a workaround for it.
Denis
There are processes that you cannot kill in either W7 or W10, MsMpEng.exe for example.
As Try3 says, can you give examples where W10 is different from W7?
The list will be quite extensive.
I will only add a few as clearly most of the files I can't suspend or kill as I could with Windows 7. To say I can accomplish the same is inaccurate. There's obvious restrictions and I even get a pop-up saying that I need Admin Privileges to execute this or that. I hit OK and it allows me to. That's annoying to me and it seems I don't have full elevated privileges like I had with Windows 7.
In particular, I can't kill or suspend:
OfficeclickTotRun.exe
HPCommrecovery.exe
Searchindexer.exe
Wudfudhost.exe
RuntimeBroker.exe
and many more.
Tabtip.exe
Ah, now that's a different matter. Yes, Windows 10 is a far cry from the XP days when you could (and most did) use Administrator as your daily account. But that was wide open to exploitation by malware. The restrictions in User Account Control are there to protect you, having to click OK to proceed is a small price to pay to be safe.
UAC was introduced in Vista, with the restrictions being tightened up progressively in each subsequent OS as malware became more sophisticated. UAC may pop up more often in W10 than W7, but by clicking OK you can still do most everything you could in W7.
Windows 10 has a much more secure "Admin" environment than any preceding OS. As stated, it's there for self-preservation, among other reasons.
The list you posted, and as you say more extensive, contains some basic system processes. Perhaps if you could tell us more about why you need to kill these processes on the fly, some better solutions may come.
In an ideal world it would be desirable that an administrator account could suspend or shutdown any process. But this is not an ideal world and compromises are necessary.
From the beginning the NT platform has had facilities that can protect a process from outside interference. This can be done when the processes is created or the process can do it itself. This protection defines what accounts have the rights to shutdown, suspend or do other things to the process. One option denies such rights to all accounts. A process so protected can not be shut down by even a fully elevated Administrator account. Even the System account which has higher rights than any user account has no such ability. This is by design and not a limitation.
Malware would like to shut down security software if this were possible so it must take active steps to protect itself. Security software provides facilities to ensure that it can only be shutdown when the user follows a specific procedure. It can not be done by outside software. Critical system processes have similar protection.
In older systems it was possible to forcibly shutdown a process by doing such things as corrupting it's memory. Modern operating systems, particularly 64 bit versions, have made this much more difficult. The OS will monitor critical system processes and if for any reason they are terminated it will initiate an immediate system restart.
Windows 10 makes more extensive use of existing protection facilities and made them more secure.
Edit: There is an alternative to Process Explorer known as Process Hacker. It can terminate some processes that other utilities cannot. If it works you must be prepared for the consequences which may include a restart which you cannot stop and resulting data loss. Use at your own risk.
This is an advanced tool for advanced users, mostly programmers. For that reason I will not provide a link.
At one time Process Hacker had a "Terminator" option that provided advanced methods for killing processes. It was later removed because it didn't work on modern systems.
Last edited by LMiller7; 13 Dec 2019 at 12:36.
Indeed, PH works, but some of those are services/drivers and even PH can not do that. For example RuntimeBroker can be terminated, but will be restarted ASAP. The proper way is to disable them to prevent them from running, I do not have neither from mentioned, but then again, in order to check, if they are needed, they have to be terminated first, because when disabled. Windows might be unable to boot.
Much thanks especially to LMiller7 and TairikuOkami.
I understand now the restrictions and limitations in Windows 10 compared to Windows 7 is now the "nature of the beast". It's frustrating for sure especially with services like runtimebroker.exe which run in the background when Edge is closed and I don't use it as my browser.
MS tried to save the world by locking down these things it helps to stop malware its not just your pc if a pc gets infected and becomes a bot as has happened in the past many pcs can be hacked that what MS is trying to do
Quote