On occasion, Windows processes running on managed endpoints will fail to close in a timely manner resulting in resource contention and subsequent LANDesk job failures on those endpoints. Terminate is a simple command line utility that can either force close a named client process, or report back to LANDesk inventory on hung process occurrence. Terminate will only manage processes that are running on the local computer on which it is executed.

The Terminate utility consists of a single executable file. This file can be built from source code by simply cloning this repository, or the single executable file can be downloaded directly from the "Compiled" folder of this site. Once you obtain the executable file (terminate.exe), you can use it as follows:

Terminate.exe TARGET=target-process-name TTL=max-process-age-in-minutes CONTRACT=TAG-or-KILL

In this example we use Terminate to force close (kill) all instances of vulscan that have been running for more than 15 minutes.

   Terminate.exe TARGET=vulscan.exe TTL=15 CONTRACT=KILL

In this example we use Terminate to report all instances of vulscan that have been running for more than 15 minutes.

   Terminate.exe TARGET=vulscan.exe TTL=15 CONTRACT=TAG

Terminate command parameters are case insensitive. Process name can be specified with or without the .exe extension.

Terminate logs output to the console window (when run interactively) as well as to a log file at %TEMP% which will resolve to Windows\Temp if run as a LANDesk task

Using the 'tag' parameter enables the LANDesk administrator to view process info centrally from the LANDesk console. However, to use this feature, you must enable custom data. When ‘tag’ is used, terminate.exe will use miniscan.exe to send custom data from the client to the LANDesk core at these two custom data paths:

Custom Data - Support - ProcessName

Custom Data - Support - ProcessAgeMinutes