Unity has a habit of freezing and becoming completely unresponsive about once a day. Usually if I leave the editor on and leave the computer for a few hours.
This is bad enough but what makes this horrible is that for some reason you cannot kill the Unity.exe process. You just get an Access Denied in the Task Manager. Even Taskkill /F fails. Is there something special that unity is doing that makes it impossible to kill, I am tired of having to completely reboot my computer at least once a day.
ive just starter to have the same thing - seems odd
I haven’t had a problem killing Unity on the rare occasion I have had to. Are you launching Unity under the same user that you’re using? For example, if your regular account is not administrator, and you are launching Unity as administrator, you might not be able to kill it with your regular user.
Joe, Microsoft doesn’t care if you are the administrator. They still wont let you do what you want to.
DDNA, best answer I can give, is a restart. If you walk away, close Unity.
Just started getting this as well. Mainly when working on custom editors with visual studio open. This is some sort of wait lock error in unity. Its a serious problem.
I’m having the same problem in version 2018.2.1f1. Every time Unity crashes while running the scene I have to reboot because I can’t kill Unity.exe (Access denied)
same here, can’t kill it, even from command prompt:
taskkill /PID 12384 /F
ERROR: The process with PID 12384 could not be terminated.
Reason: There is no running instance of the task.
taskkill /IM “Unity.exe” /F
ERROR: The process “Unity.exe” with PID 12384 could not be terminated.
Reason: There is no running instance of the task.
Unity process exists, it’s visible in Task Manager 
I’m seeing the same. I’m using version 2018.3, but I think I was seeing it with 2018.2 as well. My only recourse seems to be to hard-shutdown the machine and reboot.
There is one exception. Following a lead from another forum, I started to update my Nvidia driver (for Geforce GTX 1080) before rebooting. Curiously, that seemed to kill the Unity.exe process. The updated driver hasn’t really stopped the bug. Still, it’s an intriguing clue, that the upgrade process for the driver could release the Unity.exe process.
Just hopping in to say that we’ve started to notice this exact same behavior even in the latest 2018.2 too.
Same here with 2018.2.15
Same here, not even Process Explorer or Process Hacker will kill it
any updates on this? the process disappears after 5 minutes but right now interferes with Steam.
Bump.
I have the same problem with my project in 2019.2.12.f1.
It always crashes the second time i press play in the editor with a Unet connection manager active in the scene. This is a VR project. I can kill the unity.exe process that is not responding in task manager, but when I do, there is still another unity.exe process active with 0% CPU usage and a lot of Memory still being used. The only way I can unload this memory is by restarting my computer.
Same issue right now with 2021.3.16, went to eat, got back, unkilleable dead window/process
same problem on 2023
Heya, is it possible to get some kind of response here?
This issue has existed in every version of Unity since 2017, there are several threads about it open, it’s survived the forum transfer (unlike a lot of other stuff somehow), and there’s still not been a single official response from Unity.
It’s the only program that does this to me and I’ve never seen it happen to this extent, or at least not without identifiable cause. It’s wild that there’s a bug whose solution is “restart your entire computer” yet it seemingly hasn’t had any actual attention from the team.
I’m writing this because I’m currently running my 3D printer and pausing it can mess up the print. So, because Unity is stuck open, I’m physically incapable of using Unity for 12 hours, until either it magically resolves (it won’t) or my print is done and I can restart freely.
It’s driving me crazy, but it wouldn’t be nearly as bad if even a Unity janitor dropped by to say no one cares and they’re leaving it in. I’d just like to know they’re aware it exists, at least.
edit: FWIW, this happens to me on both 2023 and 6000, so no luck with the update getting rid of this either.
just making sure I bump this since it’s still present as an issue in 6000.1
same here, on version 6 and reloading domain and editor cannot be killed from task manager
Indeed.
I cannot open my Unity project for the next 10 hours because I cannot turn off my computer due to many concurrent background tasks I cannot halt.
As the 5th post said, it seems to do with Custom Editors.