Find process by thread ID

Question

One of my programs outputs its thread ID for debugging purposes. For testing reasons I'd like to kill the process to which the thread ID belongs.

How do I get the process ID if I have the thread ID so that I can use it with taskkill?

I tried

• tasklist but it doesn't seem to have a switch for thead IDs.
• SysInternals Process Explorer's "Find handle" feature, which works, but I'd need something that can be automated in a batch file
• SysInternals Handle -a Thread, but that doesn't seem to work. handle -a | find "Thread" works better, but I lose the process information

Answer 1

You can do it like this with a batch file:

Batchfile killprocess.bat:

@echo off
set processhandle=
set description=
set handle=%1
IF "%handle%." == "." (
  echo Usage: killprocess threadID
  exit/b
)

FOR /F "tokens=*" %%A IN ('WMIC PATH Win32_thread WHERE handle^=%handle% GET Processhandle /VALUE ^| find "="') DO set "%%A"
FOR /F "tokens=*" %%A IN ('WMIC PATH Win32_process WHERE handle^=%processhandle% GET Description /VALUE ^| find "="') DO set "%%A"

IF "%ProcessHandle%." == "." (
  echo ThreadID not found
  exit/b
)

echo I'm going to kill %Description% (Processhandle = %processhandle%) if you don't press Q in 5 seconds
echo (or you can press Y to continue)
choice /N /T 5 /C yq /D y
if "%errorlevel%"=="2" goto :eof

echo Killing %Description% (Processhandle = %processhandle%)
Taskkill /PID %processhandle% /T /F

Usage would be something like this:
killprocess 13008

Edit: I also added an abort option (choice) and a description of the process being killed. You could delete this if you don't want it.

Answer 2

Here's my C++ solution in case anyone wants to use it, I license it as CC0 / public domain. I seldom implement in C++, so forgive mistakes.

#include "stdafx.h"
#include <sstream>
#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <iostream>
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    if (argc < 2)
    {
        std::cout << "Usage: " << argv[0] << " <Thread ID>" << std::endl;
        std::cout << "Returns the process ID of a thread." << std::endl;
        std::cout << "Errorlevels:" << std::endl;
        std::cout << "   0 success" << std::endl;
        std::cout << "   1 too few arguments" << std::endl;
        std::cout << "   2 error parsing thread ID" << std::endl;
        std::cout << "   3 error opening thread" << std::endl;
        return 1;
    }

    std::istringstream iss(argv[1]);
    int threadId;

    if (iss >> threadId)
    {
        std::cout << threadId << std::endl;
        HANDLE threadHandle = OpenThread(THREAD_QUERY_INFORMATION, false, (DWORD)threadId);
        if (threadHandle)
        {
            DWORD pid = GetProcessIdOfThread(threadHandle);
            CloseHandle(threadHandle);
            std::cout << pid << std::endl;
            return 0;
        }
        std::cerr << "Error opening thread. Perhaps run as admin or thread does not exist?";
        return 3;
    }
    std::cerr << "Error parsing thread ID. Use decimal, not hex?";
    return 2;
}