PID exists in netstat but does not exist in task m

Question

I have discovered a running process with PID 26376 listening on port 9001 and 9002 as when I try to run my program(as a service) which binds to that port it fails.

But when I try to kill it using taskkill /PID it says that the process 26376 is not found. Similarly when I try to find the process in task manager with "Show processes from all users" selected, I couldn't find it anywhere.

Can anyone explain this? Is it a defunct zombie process? I suspect that the process listening on that port is a previous instance of my program running but what could have caused this?

EDIT: Sysinternals TCPView shows the process as non-existent. Sysinternals Process Explorer does not show the process. Tasklist does not show the process.

Answer 1

Another option is to bounce the NIC associated with the connection. Be careful if you are doing this over RDP, you'll want to script it so the NIC will come back online or you'll lock yourself out and will need console access.

This link explains how to do it with CMD and powershell:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-enable-or-disable-wi-fi-and-ethernet-network-adapters-windows-10

Answer 2

You don't need Task Manager for tracking this. Just run netstat -b which will display the exe associated with the PID..

Answer 3

(improved from @mfck's answer)

1. kill all processes named cmd.exe
2. kill all processes named conhost.exe

Answer 4

Well, in my case killing all the conhost.exe instances owned by the same user as the initial process released the port.