Some troubleshooting techniques for background processes on Windows

WindowsTroubleshooting.md

Windows Troubleshooting

Using background processes on windows, especially if connected through ssh, might be painful. Here's a collection of (some of) the problems that I ran into while using Windows.

Available RAM:

You can get the amount of available RAM (free equivalent command) by typing:

wmic ComputerSystem get TotalPhysicalMemory

Stop a process

When you start a background process with start (nohup equivalent) you might want to stop it:

:: identify the processes (supposing that python.exe is what you want to locate)
wmic process where "name='python.exe'" get ProcessId,CommandLine

:: kill it with
taskkill /PID <PID> /F

Search and kill a process

There might be situations in which you wanted, for instance, to delete a directory but the OS returns an error complaining that another process is locking the resource. In this case:

1. Win + R,
2. type resmon.exe (resource monitor),
3. start writing the resource you need in the search bar in the middle of the window,
4. kill all the process that are holdingn the resource.

Remove a folder with its content

rm -rf <dir> equivalent:

rd /s /q <dir>

Copy a folder with its content

cp -r <src_fold> <dst_fold> equivalent is even more absurd:

xcopy <src_dir> <dst_dir> /E /I