Starting and Stopping Processes¶

PowerShell provides a clean, object‑oriented way to start, stop, inspect, and manage processes on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Unlike traditional shells that return plain text, PowerShell returns rich process objects, allowing you to filter, sort, and pipe them into other commands.

This section covers the essential cmdlets:

• Start-Process
• Get-Process
• Stop-Process

1. Starting Processes¶

The primary cmdlet for launching applications is Start-Process.

It can start GUI apps, console apps, scripts, installers, and more.

1.1 Starting a simple application¶

Start-Process "notepad.exe"

This opens Notepad in a new window.

1.2 Starting a process with arguments¶

Start-Process "notepad.exe" -ArgumentList "C:\Data\notes.txt"

This opens Notepad and loads the file.

1.3 Starting a process in a specific directory¶

Start-Process "powershell.exe" -WorkingDirectory "C:\Scripts"

1.4 Starting a process and waiting for it to finish¶

Start-Process "msiexec.exe" -ArgumentList "/i app.msi" -Wait

Useful for installers or long‑running tasks.

1.5 Starting a process and capturing the exit code¶

$p = Start-Process "ping.exe" -ArgumentList "localhost" -Wait -PassThru
$p.ExitCode

• PassThru returns a process object so you can inspect it.

2. Getting Process Information¶

Use Get-Process to list running processes.

2.1 Listing all processes¶

Get-Process

Returns objects with properties like:

• Name
• Id
• CPU
• WorkingSet
• StartTime

2.2 Filtering by name¶

Get-Process -Name "notepad"

2.3 Filtering by ID¶

Get-Process -Id 1234

2.4 Sorting processes¶

Get-Process | Sort-Object CPU -Descending

2.5 Selecting specific properties¶

Get-Process | Select-Object Name, Id, CPU

3. Stopping Processes¶

Use Stop-Process to terminate processes.

3.1 Stopping by name¶

Stop-Process -Name "notepad"

This stops all Notepad instances.

3.2 Stopping by process ID¶

Stop-Process -Id 1234

3.3 Forcing termination¶

Stop-Process -Name "chrome" -Force

Use -Force carefully—this kills the process immediately without cleanup.

4. Combining Cmdlets for Real‑World Tasks¶

4.1 Restarting a process¶

$proc = Get-Process -Name "notepad" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

if ($proc) {
    Stop-Process -Id $proc.Id
}

Start-Process "notepad.exe"

4.2 Killing all processes using too much memory¶

Get-Process |
    Where-Object { $_.WorkingSet -gt 500MB } |
    Stop-Process -Force

4.3 Monitoring a process until it exits¶

$p = Start-Process "notepad.exe" -PassThru
$p.WaitForExit()
"Notepad closed."

5. Summary¶

PowerShell’s process management commands are powerful, consistent, and ideal for automation, monitoring, and system administration.