How to Exit a Telnet Session established at the command prompt without exiting the command shell session

Summary
This article explains how to exit a telnet session without closing the command prompt. This is useful if you are using the telnet command repeatedly or are testing a series of devices at different IP addresses and/or ports and thus want to take advantage of the arrow up functionality at the command prompt.

Keywords
Telnet
Exit, quit
Blank screen

Symptoms
After entering a telnet session, one finds that one cannot issue a command or key stroke that causes telnet to quit.

Background Information
One can start a telnet session by typing telnet <IP address> or by typing telnet <IP address> port number (e.g. 7700 is the Ethernet ION protocol communications port for ION devices).

After entering the IP address and port number a blank screen appears. This behavior is expected. However, you will find that
you can not type in this screen. It may seem that the only way to exit this session is by closing the screen.

Resolution
Press down <Ctrl>, <Alt> and <Delete> at the same time and open Task Manager. In the Processes tab, find the telnet.exe
process, highlight it and click on End Process. This terminates the telnet session within the command prompt without exiting the command shell session.