How do you list all processes on the command line in Windows?

Is there a command equivalent to 'ps' on Unix that can list all processes on a Windows machine?

16 Answers

Working with cmd.exe:

tasklist

If you have Powershell:

get-process

Via WMI:

wmic process

(you can query remote machines as well with /node:ComputerOrIP, and there are a LOT more ways to customize this command: link)

There is a tool called Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line tool (wmic.exe).

You can call wmic process list to see all processes.

I wanted to mention that WMIC (pam's entry) can do a lot more. Have a look at my WMIC snippets page, which is a cheatsheet showing many of the common ways to use WMIC (with sample output shown) here

1. Tasklist

2. WMIC /OUTPUT:C:\ProcessList.txt PROCESS get Caption,Commandline,Processid

or

 WMIC /OUTPUT:C:\ProcessList.txt path win32_process get Caption,Processid,Commandline 

I tried on Windows 7. The command is: TASKLIST /FI "IMAGENAME eq application_name"

Eg: c:\>TASKLIST /FI "IMAGENAME eq notepad.exe"

To show all process with port details:

c:\> TASKLIST 

Also to kill the process you can use c:\> pskill or tskill processname

Eg: c:\> tskill notepad

tasklist or pslist from sysinternals. Also, get-process is amazing from PowerShell.

If you use Powershell, it has the 'ps' command (it is aliased to Get-Process)

To kill a process use:

TASKKILL /F /IM processname.exe 

For example:

TASKKILL /F /IM firefox.exe 

If you running windows XP try using the 'tasklist' command. I tried it out with Vista and it seems to also work.

Use this command to see all the processes in windows machine

tasklist /svc

open windows command prompt

C:\>tasklist // list all the tasks C:\>Taskkill /IM firefox.exe /F // Kill task by name 

or

C:\>Taskkill /PID 26356 /F // kill task by PId 

I had following problem on Windows 2003 SP2: Tasklist didn't return any output on stdout or stderr, when called from a process started as Windows service (even under Local Account). Tasklist returned with the (undocumented) code 128.

Called from the same program started as a normal process (not as service), it did run.

No help to change it. I couldn't find any reason or solution but use "pslist /accepteula" of sysinternal instead of it.

Same problem with taskkill: I had to replace it whith pskill.

I have done a msproject ( c source code) , archive is available at : lsproc.zip project archive

and exe file: lsproc.exe binary

this is a command line tool output:

lsproc Thierry Bremard list binary files and driver with their local path on disks most of code retreived from msdn site -------------------- Process ID: 0 -------------------- Process ID: 4 <unknown> (PID: 4) <unknown> PageFaultCount : 0x00002E4B PeakWorkingSetSize : 0x00419000 WorkingSetSize (Mem usage) : 0x0003A000 (232 ko) QuotaPeakPagedPoolUsage : 0x00000000 QuotaPagedPoolUsage : 0x00000000 QuotaPeakNonPagedPoolUsage : 0x00000000 QuotaNonPagedPoolUsage : 0x00000000 PagefileUsage : 0x00000000 PeakPagefileUsage : 0x00000000 -------------------- Process ID: 764 smss.exe (PID: 764) \SystemRoot\System32\smss.exe PageFaultCount : 0x000000D6 PeakWorkingSetSize : 0x00082000 WorkingSetSize (Mem usage) : 0x0006C000 (432 ko) QuotaPeakPagedPoolUsage : 0x00006C34 QuotaPagedPoolUsage : 0x00001854 QuotaPeakNonPagedPoolUsage : 0x000004D8 QuotaNonPagedPoolUsage : 0x00000280 PagefileUsage : 0x0002C000 PeakPagefileUsage : 0x00030000 -------------------- Process ID: 816 -------------------- Process ID: 844 winlogon.exe (PID: 844) \??\C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe PageFaultCount : 0x0000261D PeakWorkingSetSize : 0x00B58000 WorkingSetSize (Mem usage) : 0x0029B000 (2668 ko) QuotaPeakPagedPoolUsage : 0x0001B054 QuotaPagedPoolUsage : 0x000185A4 QuotaPeakNonPagedPoolUsage : 0x0000C988 QuotaNonPagedPoolUsage : 0x0000B6A0 PagefileUsage : 0x005EC000 PeakPagefileUsage : 0x006C6000 -------------------- ... PeakPagefileUsage : 0x03277000 -------------------- Process ID: 2712 lsproc.exe (PID: 2712) C:\Documents and Settings\LoginX\Bureau\lsproc.exe PageFaultCount : 0x000000EC PeakWorkingSetSize : 0x000F1000 WorkingSetSize (Mem usage) : 0x000E4000 (912 ko) QuotaPeakPagedPoolUsage : 0x000032B4 QuotaPagedPoolUsage : 0x000032B4 QuotaPeakNonPagedPoolUsage : 0x00000400 QuotaNonPagedPoolUsage : 0x00000398 PagefileUsage : 0x00042000 PeakPagefileUsage : 0x0005C000 There are 131 drivers: -------------------- 1: ntkrnlpa.exe \WINDOWS\system32\ntkrnlpa.exe -------------------- 2: hal.dll \WINDOWS\system32\hal.dll -------------------- 3: KDCOM.DLL \WINDOWS\system32\KDCOM.DLL -------------------- 4: BOOTVID.dll \WINDOWS\system32\BOOTVID.dll ... -------------------- 129: HTTP.sys \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\HTTP.sys -------------------- 130: hiber_WMILIB.SYS \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\hiber_WMILIB.SYS -------------------- 131: ntdll.dll \WINDOWS\system32\ntdll.dll -------------- 

Using WMI and Powershell you can do:

Get-WMIObject -Class Win32_Process 

Then you can filter properties using Select-Object and show in GUI using Out-GridView.

For more process info

running in cmd,handle is the process id:

wmic.exe path Win32_Process where handle='22792' get Commandline /format:list 

result:

/path/to/app.exe [args specified goes here] 

Hello if you want to list running process ID's on a Windows machine then open a cmd screen and type:

netstat -aon | more 

use the Enter key to scroll.