Here’s a clear explanation of PsKill:

🛠️ What Is PsKill?

PsKill is a command-line utility from Microsoft’s Sysinternals PsTools suite. It’s designed to terminate processes on local or remote Windows systems—especially useful when a program becomes unresponsive or refuses to close normally.

🔑 Key Features

• Forcefully kills processes by name or process ID (PID)
• Works on local and remote machines
• Requires admin rights to terminate system or other users’ processes
• Lightweight and script-friendly for automation

🧪 How PsKill Works

PsKill sends a termination signal to the specified process:

• If you provide a PID, it targets that exact process.
• If you provide a process name, it kills all processes with that name.

Example:

pskill notepad.exe

This command will terminate all instances of Notepad running on your system.

To kill a process by PID:

pskill 1234

To target a remote machine:

pskill \\RemotePC notepad.exe

⚠️ Caution

• PsKill does not prompt for confirmation—it kills immediately.
• Terminating critical system processes can cause crashes or BSODs.
• Starting with Windows 8.1, many system-critical processes are protected and cannot be killed by PsKill.

📦 How to Get PsKill

You can download it as part of the PsTools suite from Microsoft. No installation is required—just unzip and run from the command line.