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ERROR: The Process with PID xxxx could not be terminated. Reason: Access is denied

Sometimes when attempting to Kill a Process in Windows you may receive the following message:

“ERROR: The Process with PID xxxx could not be terminated. Reason: Access is denied”

where xxxx is the PID number of the process which you are trying to kill.

We have found that the best way to kill a process in Windows where you are getting an Access denied message is to use a tool like Process Hacker(https://processhacker.sourceforge.io/index.php).

ERROR: The Process with PID xxxx could not be terminated. Reason: Access is denied

Sometimes there are processes however which can’t be killed without rebooting the machine. For example:

(i)Processes which run at the kernel level
(ii)Processes which have a buggy driver

Please also keep in mind that a windows machine could become unstable after killing some processes and may force it to reboot regardless.

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