On a Windows 10 system, the executable WavesSvc64.exe periodically consumes all available physical memory and needs to be terminated. I have uninstalled the Waves Audio application, but this executable still running sometimes.
Despite the name, WavesSvc64.exe is not a Windows service. There is a Windows service named WavesSysSvc with executable WavesSysSvc64.exe, which will respond correctly to net stop WavesSysSvc by shutting down. It does not seem to be involved in the memory consumption, though.
I am able to kill WavesSvc64.exe from Resource Monitor by right clicking and selecting End Process Tree.
To automate the process, I tried to do the same thing from an elevated command prompt with the command taskkill /IM "WavesSvc64.exe" /T /F. ( /T means " Terminates the specified process and any child processes which were started by it." /F means "force kill".)
The result is
ERROR: The process with PID 1840 (child process of PID 11272) could not be terminated. Reason: There is no running instance of the task.
After running the command I can still see WavesSvc64.exe with status "Running" in Resource Monitor. I can then manually kill it in Resource Monitor (as described above) and the status will change to Terminated.
Why would taskkill from the command line be unable to terminate the task?