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.