The Tasklist Command

Tasklist, a command within Command Prompt, allows one to see the programs running on his/her computer or any remote computer within the same network. Tasklist, for me, comes in handy when I want to view the running programs on another computer within my network without having to actually remote in to the computer and go to task manager.

Open up command prompt and the command you will want to use for this is simply tasklist.

C:\Windows> Tasklist

Just exactly like the task manager, you are presented with a list of running tasks. Let’s say you wanted to view the tasks of a remote computer on your network. You would use:

tasklist -s  COMPUTERNAME

tasklist /? for more help with the tasklist command.

If there is a task you would like to end/stop you can do that within command prompt! This comes in handy for me especially when a computer on my network freezes because of a particular program. For me, it’s internet explorer I wish to end since I’m using firefox! For this I would use the taskkill command.

taskkill /f /im iexplore.exe

Here’s a visual of what I’ve done.

To perform this task on another computer within your network you will use this command.

taskkill /s COMPUTERNAME /f /im NAMEOFPROGRAM.exe /t

taskkill /? for more help with this command.

The /f stands for FORCE. The force command will instantly kill the program without prompting you for a save or asking you if you’re sure about closing.

Well, here’s some of the basic commands I use everyday with the tasklist and taskkill command within command prompt. Like any command you can always use the /? to learn more about a command. Hope this helps you!