How to Kill a Running Port in PowerShell (Fix Port 3001 Issue in VS Code)

Sometimes when you stop your app in VS Code, the process doesn’t fully terminate.
As a result, your app keeps running on port 3001, even when you want to use port 3000.

This is common with:

• Next.js
• Node.js
• Express
• Payload CMS

This guide shows how to safely kill the running process using PowerShell.

🚨 The Problem

You try to start your app:

npm run dev

But you see something like:

Port 3000 is already in use, trying 3001...

Even after closing VS Code or stopping the terminal, port 3000 is still occupied.

✅ Solution: Kill the Process Using PowerShell

Step 1: Find the process using port 3000

Open PowerShell (Run as Administrator is recommended):

netstat -ano | findstr :3000

Example output:

TCP 127.0.0.1:3000 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING 12345

👉 The last number (12345) is the PID (Process ID).

Step 2: Kill the process by PID

Run:

taskkill /PID 12345 /F

If successful, you’ll see:

SUCCESS: The process with PID 12345 has been terminated.

Step 3: Restart your app

Now go back to your project and run:

npm run dev

Your app should now run correctly on:

http://localhost:3000

⚡ One-Line Shortcut (Advanced)

If you want a faster way, you can kill whatever is using port 3000 in one command:

Get-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 3000).OwningProcess | Stop-Process -Force

⚠️ Use this carefully — it immediately stops the process.

🧠 Why This Happens

This usually occurs when:

• VS Code crashes
• Node process hangs
• Hot reload doesn’t exit cleanly
• A previous dev server is still running in the background

✅ Best Practices to Avoid This Issue

• Always stop the server with Ctrl + C
• Close unused terminals
• Restart VS Code if ports behave strangely
• Use a .env file to explicitly define your port:
• PORT=3000

Final Tip

This trick works not just for 3000, but any port:

• 3001
• 4000
• 8000
• 5432 (Postgres)

Just replace the port number.