Stopping a Stubborn VM in Proxmox

For a few reasons, sometimes a Proxmox VM will not stop. In order of “safety”, try these options:

1. In the GUI, select the VM and in the upper right corner, select “Shutdown”
2. In the GUI, select the VM and in the upper right corner, select “Stop”
3. In the shell, run:

   qm stop <vmid>
   

4. If all of that fails:

   ps aux | grep <VMID> # will show you the kvm process ID running your VMID
   kill -9 <PID> # you can now kill it with the process ID
   

Source: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/stop-vm-impossible.101736/post-438745