kill a child process on windows using powershell - powershell

Question

I have the below script but it seems it wont kill the child processes. How do i kill child processes?
When it runs, it looks fine but then there are dialog boxes left over and then when i check task manager the original processes are still running. Which makes me think if the script ran properly. The other weird part to this is that naturally I would see these processes (.exe programs) running active on the task bar but after the script runs they look like they aren't running. But again, I check task manager and sure enough, they are still running.
$ErrorActionPreference = "SilentlyContinue"
Stop-Transcript | Out-Null
$ErrorActionPreference = "Continue"
Start-Transcript -Path C:\Scripts\Errors\errors.log -Append
$process = Get-Process -Name "IVR1","IVR2","IVR3"
$IVR1path = "C:\IVR1"
$IVR2path = "C:\IVR2"
$IVR3path = "C:\IVR3"
if ($process) {
$Process | Stop-Process -Force
Start-Sleep -s 5
cd $IVR1path
Start-Process ".\IVR1.exe"
cd IVR2path
Start-Process ".\IVR2.exe"
cd IVR3path
Start-Process ".\IVR3.exe"
cd ..
cd ..
$From = "IVR1#example.com.au"
$To = "myemail#example.com.au"
$cc = "myemail#example.com.au"
$Subject = "**TEST** - IVR1 has been recovered"
$Body = "The IVR has been successfully recovered"
$SMTPServer = "mail.example.com.au"
Send-MailMessage -From $From -to $To -cc $cc -Subject $Subject -Body $Body -SmtpServer $SMTPServer
Stop-Transcript
}
Would anyone have any suggestions? Could it be due to child processes not being killed or the original process being hung?

Answer 1

I think that you've misused tools you have to achieve the goal. Use https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.management/get-process?view=powershell-4.0 and functions listed at the end of page ( all about process lifecycle ).
Side note: add more verbosity ( write-output variable values) to what your script does so you will know what is happening ( or use the debugger, because I`m not sure if most of code you pasted is even executed ).