phantom-killer

phantom-killer.ps1 is a simple cross-platform Powershell script to safely close lingering (zombie) processes that have been abandoned by their previously-closed parent process. This script only kills processes without a parent, while leaving other instances alone.

About

Purpose

Sometimes programs create child processes, and sometimes those parent processes die without cleaning up their children -- producing zombies! Then you're stuck wondering why you're magically out of RAM, or why you can't delete a folder because "child.exe is being used by another program".

Instead of having to open Task Manager, find the process, and terminate them manually, this script will do it for you!

Compatibility

This script works with both Windows "Desktop" Powershell and the newer Powershell "Core" on Windows/Linux without any additional dependencies. It has been specifically verified with:

• Desktop (Windows)
  • Powershell 5.1
• Core (Windows/Linux)
  • Powershell Core 6.0
  • Powershell Core 6.1
  • Powershell 7.0 (LTS)

Note:

Prior to Powershell 6.0, the Get-Process cmdlet lacked the ability to return information about the parent process, requiring a lengthy workaround using Get-CimInstance calls. Starting with Powershell 6.0, all of the logic can be reduced down to a simple 1-line statement of

# $ProcessName contains the name of the zombie process, without the extension (ie: phantomjs, PlexTranscoder, ...)
Get-Process -Name $ProcessName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Where-Object { ($null -eq $_.Parent) -or $($_.Parent.HasExited) }

Usage and Help

Download phantom-killer.ps1, open powershell or pwsh, and run Get-Help ./phantom-killer.ps1 to see usage info

Get PowerShell Help

Use the built-in help info from PowerShell for usage, parameters, etc.

PS C:\> Get-Help .\phantom-killer.ps1

See what will be terminated with a dry-run

As a sanity check it's always good to see what processes will be killed, this will list all phantomjs processes that would be killed off

PS C:\> .\phantom-killer.ps1 -ProcessName 'phantomjs' -DryRun

Kill some Zombie Processes

PS C:\> .\phantom-killer.ps1 -ProcessName 'phantomjs'

Misc

Why is it called "Phantom Killer"?

Because 95% of the times that I use this script, it's for rogue phantomjs.exe processes.

Contributing

For now, just open up an issue or submit a PR