To manually kill a process that you believe is a spyware and is causing high cpu usage, firstly make sure that the process actually is a spyware, this can be done by using the tasklist command with /SVC switch. So first execute the following command:

Tasklist /SVC

The output will be like the following:-














Note: for more information about what these options mean type Tasklist /?

Now if you see in the output a malicious process then to kill it and remove it follow 3 simple steps:-

  • Note its process id ie the PID in the output of Tasklist /SVC command.

  • Then Use the Taskkill command "Taskkill /PID xxx /F" (without quotes and replace the xxx with the process id of the process you want to kill). The output should signal a success message like the following image shows successful termination of a process.

















  • Run a scan with any anitvirus (prefer Bitdefender) and anti-malware (prefer Malware-Bytes), they will remove the malware.


Note: To kill a process that has hanged or is stuck repeat the aforementioned steps except the step where you have to do virus and malware scan .