How to temporarily stop or suspend a Windows process (11/10/8/7/Server)?

You can temporarily stop a Windows process using PsSuspend command-line tool and later resume the process with the same command. This tool will be very useful when a process is consuming a lot of resources and you want to pause that process and want to release the resources for another process or process. Disk usage, network usage, and CPU can be released like this. PsSuspend tool is a part of free tool kits developed by Microsoft’s Sysinternals division. You can trust these command-line tools since it is developed by Microsoft.

How to get and use PsSuspend tool?

  1. Download PsTools.zip from Microsoft’s Sysinternals Website : Url https://download.sysinternals.com/files/PSTools.zip
  2. Unzip PsTools.zip
  3. Execute the command as shown below

Syntax to pause a Windows process

PsSuspend.exe <process id/name>

Example: D:\PsTools\PsSuspend.exe chrome.exe

See this screenshot given below; PsSuspend tool suspended 51 Chrome processes.

PSSuspended a process
PsSuspend
PsSuspend – TaskManager shows that all Chrome processes in suspended status

Syntax to resume the suspended process

PsSuspend.exe <process id/name> -r

Example: d:\PsTools\PsSuspend.exe chrome.exe -r

PsSuspend – Resume Process

PsSuspend Usage/Syntax

Usage: pssuspend [- ] [-r] [\computer [-u username] [-p password]]

USING PSSUSPEND
Parameter Description

  • Displays the supported options.
    -r : Resumes the specified processes specified if they are suspended.
    \computer : Specifies the computer on which the process you want to suspend or resume is executing. The remote computer must be accessible via the NT network neighborhood.
    -u username If you want to suspend a process on a remote system and the account you are executing in does not have administrative privileges on the remote system then you must login as an administrator using this command-line option. If you do not include the password with the -p option then PsSuspend will prompt you for the password without echoing your input to the display.
    -p password This option lets you specify the login password on the command line so that you can use PsSuspend from batch files. If you specify an account name and omit the -p option PsSuspend prompts you interactively for a password.
    process id Specifies the process ID of the process you want to suspend or resume.
    process name Specifies the process name of the process or processes you want to suspend or resume.

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