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I'm running into an issue on Windows 10 where processes remain stuck in the "Suspended" state (visible through the task manager by displaying the "Status" column). Those processes cannot be killed, even with SYSTEM user rights, as Taskkill returns an "Access Denied" error.

When a process is suspended, the locks it has on the Dlls it references are not freed. This becomes problematic if another application attempts to update those Dlls.

Another problematic scenario: if an application is in charge of ensuring that another application is always running, doing API calls to detect running processes returns an exception (for suspended processes).

Here's a 100% repro: create a small .net console application that throws an exception and run it through the command line. The process will become suspended and cannot be terminated.

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(args[0]))
        {
        }
    }
}

Anyone else encountered a similar issue ? I know that suspending processes is normal under Windows 8 / 10, the issue here is that they do not resume and cannot be terminated.

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  • I can reproduce this behavior on my system as well, I have no explanation. The suspended process ends up in a zombie state and cannot be killed, you must reboot to clear it. Mar 24, 2016 at 18:05
  • If you look in the Resource Monitor > Overview Tab > CPU section the suspended processes will be at the top in blue. You can right-click on them and try the Resume option. Don't know if it'll work, though. Mar 24, 2016 at 18:14
  • It doesn't work. The process is stuck in the suspended state forever. Mar 24, 2016 at 18:15
  • Which exact version/build of Windows 10 are you using? I can't reproduce this on 1511 (build 10586.164). The process just terminates as expected (after throwing the error). It continues to show in resource Monitor for a while, with a "Terminated" status, but eventually gets dumped from the list. Mar 24, 2016 at 20:07
  • Windows 10 Enterprise - Version 1511 - OS Build 10586.164. Quite strange that we have the same build, yet different results... I wonder if it's an access right problem. Mar 24, 2016 at 20:38

1 Answer 1

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The issue was the SN-DBS service. Stopping it killed all pending suspended processes.

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  • Thanks a lot! You saved us quite a lot of time. I must admit it was a really elusive issue. Also the problem was already fixed in the new version of SN-DBS so and update does the trick.
    – Elvithari
    Oct 21, 2016 at 16:15
  • 18
    What's SN--DBS?
    – Pacerier
    Jan 29, 2017 at 13:01
  • 1
    @Pacerier based on Hussein's and Elvithari's backgrounds in the profiles I be it is the "SN Systems Distributed Build System". However, I am not a game developer so I don't have that service running on my machine. This is the first time I have noticed the problem on my machine so I am going to resort to a reboot. If I continue to have this problem I will dig deeper and hopefully remember to come back here and share my findings. May 30, 2018 at 17:16
  • In my case it was Process Explorer holding the process.
    – asthomas
    Oct 24, 2022 at 12:35

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