edit: Apologies for the typo in the title. It should read GlobalProtect.
EDIT: If you are annoyed by GlobalProtect automatically reopening after being closed, I am happy to report that thanks to some of the more helpful folks below, particularly /u/Illestpete and /u/bobsixtyfour who had some great suggestions, I have a method that appears to reliably prevent this.
The following may not be necessary, but I found them helpful:
Disable the program from automatically starting up when you boot up the machine
Change the service startup type from Automatic to Manual (I believe the command in cmd is “sc config PanGPS start= demand” - note that the space is included)
The simplest strategy I found to keep GlobalProtect closed when not in use, if desired, is to simply execute the command “sc stop PanGPS” from command line. I just created a batch file with the following contents:
echo off
taskkill /f /im pangpa.exe
sc stop PanGPS
rem sc config PanGPS start= demand
rem pause
The two commented-out lines are in case you want to change the startup state directly and in case you want to view the terminal output. Alternatively, you can just manually stop the service from the task manager (Services tab).
Note: This will completely stop the service, and manually re-opening it will result in you being unable to actually initiate the VPN connection until it is started again, so use the command “sc start PanGPS” to restart it. Alternatively, just manually start the service from the task manager (Services tab).
When you open the client, it will say either Connected or Connect. If it is Connected, click the three horizontal lines in the top right and select disable.
There are a ton of settings you can configure for the Global Protect agent on the admin side. One of which is not allowing the user to disconnect or disable.
However…the easy way to jump off is to go to settings and click sign out if the agent is set to auto re-enable itself.
I’d recommend reaching out to the IT team asking for the option to disable the agent as well if it isn’t already present.
I’m not too sure if I understand you problem correctly, but task manager is where I need to completely terminate GP Application. 2 things you need to hit the ‘End Process’ button with are the GlobalProtect Client and the GlobalProtect service, both locate under background process section. Note: you will need to be the admin of your PC to end the service or GP client will restart itself. Hope that helps.
Nope no way to do it, we had a feature request for this. since we have many vendors who use many different vpn clients and do not want a bunch of crap running.
Thanks! With the info you gathered, I managed to make my own .bat files to simply start and stop GlobalProtect when needed (Details below). It’s just what worked for me.
I totally get you. A client requires me to upload some updates to a system I rent to them through this VPN. These updates usually occur once every few months. Why would I want to have that program open and running if I’m only using it for a few minutes every few months or so?
Process that worked for me (Win10 64 bit):
Note: Some people can just “Disable” GlobalProtect through the context menu inside the GlobalProtect window if the company’s configuration allows it (Official docs here).
Stop GlobalProtect from booting on startup (Task Manager > Startup > GlobalProtect client > Disable)
Stop GlobalProtect from reopening on its own (Services > PanGPS > Right click > Properties > Startup type > “Manual” > OK)
Create a .bat file (“start-global-protect.bat”) with the following code (Substitute path to your GlobalProtect installation directory). echo off cd "C:\my\GlobalProtect\installation\folder" start PanGPA.exe sc start PanGPS rem sc config PanGPS start= demand rem pause
Create a .bat file (“stop-global-protect.bat”) with the following code. echo off taskkill /f /im pangpa.exe sc stop PanGPS rem sc config PanGPS start= demand rem pause
Create shortcuts to your .bat files (“startgp”, “stopgp”).
Set the shortcuts to always run as administrator (Right click > Properties > Shortcut > Advanced > Run as administrator)
You can access your shortcuts to open/close GlobalProtect from your search function on the Start Menu (Ex.: Win > “startgp” > Enter)
Amazed to see so many people coming to the defense of a piece of clearly user-hostile corporate software. There are ways to ensure the safety of your networks without doing this to your users.
Just looked this up because I was in a similar situation. GlobalProtect was chewing up 11% of CPU for some reason and I don’t want it running when I’m not using it.
Just as you, I was looking for a way to achieve what you wished.
First, I hate the amount of assholes here, I experienced it quite a lot, and I don’t know what these people are trying to achieve by acting that way.
It’s really one of the things I hate the most, people are just trying to get some help, and then they have to come with their annoying “If you don’t want it don’t use it!” attitude.
How is that helping anyone? Especially when there ARE things that you can do to make it better.
So…anyway, I went on a slightly different solution based on yours. I created the following bat file:
It simply checks whether the service is on or off, if it’s on it’s killing the service, if it’s off it’s starting the service, starting/killing the service does the rest of the job for me. If the service shuts down it automatically closes the client, and if if the service starts it also starts the client with it.
Annoying that you NEED to do this, but oh well…
Thanks for sharing the post and having to deal with all these annoying unhelpful people.
The year is 2024 and I can’t believe this has been an issue for so long. I was befuddled when I was simply unable to close this thing these days named “Global Protect,” and not even able to uninstall it because of that. Thanks to folks in this thread, I opted to the command line and throw this jerk software to trash, after it consumed hundreds hours of my CPU time. Crazy product. Had to use it because of university.
Apparently PAN has a new version of GP where if you stop the service you lose your internet connection. I think they play with the routing table, but I’m not sure how to fix that. Anyone solved it?
Just came in here to chip in and say I to know exactly what you’re talking about. My university has us using GP to connect to computers on campus.
And me being the clean freak I am when it comes to managing my computer I hate rouge programs like these. Probably isn’t relevant anymore but I remember doing a bunch of crap just to finally get it to stop auto starting. Was a pain.
Sometime down the line I went out of my way and set up a win 10 vm just to run global protect on there so that way it would shut down XD
This piece of crap garbage software started reopening itself in the middle of my meeting, even after closing it from the task manager. I had to pause my meeting and uninstall this software before continuing. I don’t know why uni switched to this, but I definitely sent an email to the it that this global protect is a waste of money.
I understand the use-case where it makes sense to bury a “quit” button but making it impossible just boils my blood. This program barely works on Macs, and often needs to be reinstalled just to connect. It also used like 15% of the memory sitting idle – not even connected to vpn – on one of my older machines.