Unable to stop, kill or remove Docker container

I have also encountered this a few times. What I did to stop the 'hung' container was -

1. docker ps to display container ID
2. net stop docker - stop docker engine (Note all containers will stop)
3. Delete folder in c:\programdata\docker\containers whose name starts with the ID from step 1
4. net start docker - start docker engine

Unfortunately the docker service still has to be stopped and started but at least I didn't have to re-install.

For us it was an update that changed the docker.service config on RHEL.

Solution

docker rm -f <container-id>
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart containerd
systemctl restart docker
docker-compose up -d

The Error we were receiving

docker-compose up -d --force-recreate
Recreating 952ba6a5bbc4_my-app ... error
t: connection refused: unknown'
​
ERROR: for 952ba6a5bbc4_my-app  Cannot start service my-app: b'dial unix \x00/run/containerd/s/086e56: connect: connection refused: unknown'
​
ERROR: for my-app  Cannot start service my-app: b'dial unix \x00/run/containerd/s/086e56: connect: connection refused: unknown'
ERROR: Encountered errors while bringing up the project.```

For urgent cases, when even docker rm -f is does not help, it can be solved by stopping deamon and manually removing container:

sudo systemctl stop docker
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/docker/containers/<CONTAINER_ID>
sudo systemctl start docker

That may sound too radical but I've just reinstalled Docker. The redundant containers have gone. Finally.