# How to close programs from DOS



## crillin (Sep 14, 2001)

hi.

I was just wondering if there is a way to close a running program from MS-DOS Prompt window. Forexample, if i want to close kazaa from MS-DOS Prompt window.

thank you in advance.


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## Casey820 (May 3, 2002)

If you're running Windows XP Pro (not sure about Home), you can use kill.exe to close a program. Open a command prompt and type kill.exe /? for information on how to use it.


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## Guest (Oct 8, 2002)

Since DOS and/or DOS-emulators have absolutely no clue what Windows is up to (internally) I don't think this would be a wise thing to attempt. I, personally, have never heard of such a utility or capability.


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## Casey820 (May 3, 2002)

Using kill.exe can leave some processes orphaned, but I've used it successfully many times. It's fairly common in enterprise computing.


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## jib (Mar 18, 2002)

I'm sorry, I'm running winME now.

It seems the kill command doesn't work on winME. 

I found a program called Absurd Terminator that you can use to do stuff like shutdown, restart, terminate a process, etc. In the help files of this program, it said that I could kill a program from MS-DOS window by typing:

c:\Program Files\Absord Terminator> terminator.exe /kill word

word being the program name you want to kill.

Since this command also uses the kill command, it didn't work for me.

I'm still looking for a way to this on winME... I'll post i find something... and if anyone can help me i would appriciate it.

thanks.


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## Casey820 (May 3, 2002)

A word of warning, orphaned processes are more likely on Win 9x machines (Windows ME falls into that category). Kill.exe is only available on XP. It's also available in Administrator kits for Windows 2000, but I don't know if those are free downloads or not.


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