kill a child process on windows using powershell

Question

I have the below script but it seems it wont kill the child processes. How do i kill child processes?

When it runs, it looks fine but then there are dialog boxes left over and then when i check task manager the original processes are still running. Which makes me think if the script ran properly. The other weird part to this is that naturally I would see these processes (.exe programs) running active on the task bar but after the script runs they look like they aren't running. But again, I check task manager and sure enough, they are still running.

$ErrorActionPreference = "SilentlyContinue"
Stop-Transcript | Out-Null
$ErrorActionPreference = "Continue"
Start-Transcript -Path C:\Scripts\Errors\errors.log -Append
$process = Get-Process -Name "IVR1","IVR2","IVR3"
$IVR1path = "C:\IVR1"
$IVR2path = "C:\IVR2"
$IVR3path = "C:\IVR3"
if ($process) {
    $Process | Stop-Process -Force
    Start-Sleep -s 5
    cd $IVR1path
    Start-Process ".\IVR1.exe"
    cd IVR2path
    Start-Process ".\IVR2.exe"
    cd IVR3path
    Start-Process ".\IVR3.exe"
    cd ..
    cd ..
    $From = "IVR1@example.com.au"
    $To = "myemail@example.com.au"
    $cc = "myemail@example.com.au"
    $Subject = "**TEST** - IVR1 has been recovered"
    $Body = "The IVR has been successfully recovered"
    $SMTPServer = "mail.example.com.au"
    Send-MailMessage -From $From -to $To -cc $cc -Subject $Subject -Body $Body -SmtpServer $SMTPServer
    Stop-Transcript
}

Would anyone have any suggestions? Could it be due to child processes not being killed or the original process being hung?

what is the difference between your current question here and the previous one from 8 hours previous? this one >> Can't kill off an .exe file using Powershell V4.0 - Stack Overflow — https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54699835/cant-kill-off-an-exe-file-using-powershell-v4-0 — Lee_Dailey, Feb 15 '19 at 06:27
The difference being is that the last question was related to only killing the .exe processes but when I do that you mentioned you wouldn't work so thought maybe it's related to a different scenario hence the new question above. How do I kill a child process? Can you please help — rohan groombridge, Feb 15 '19 at 07:24
my last comment in that thread linked to a different way to terminate a process - by using WMI calls. did you ever try that? — Lee_Dailey, Feb 15 '19 at 07:31
There are lot of broken pieces which wish to connect address but primarily, where is this `Get-Process -name $processname | kill -PassThru` — Ranadip Dutta, Feb 15 '19 at 07:43
Please stop formatting code as snippets when the code is not a [runnable snippet](https://stackoverflow.blog/2014/09/16/introducing-runnable-javascript-css-and-html-code-snippets/). For code formatting use the `{}` icon in the toolbar. — Ansgar Wiechers, Feb 15 '19 at 09:01

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 15 '19 at 13:02

I think that you've misused tools you have to achieve the goal. Use https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.management/get-process?view=powershell-4.0 and functions listed at the end of page ( all about process lifecycle ). Side note: add more verbosity ( write-output variable values) to what your script does so you will know what is happening ( or use the debugger, because I`m not sure if most of code you pasted is even executed ).

kill a child process on windows using powershell

1 Answers1