It’s frustrating when Windows programs freeze up. Everyone has clicked on something in an app, only to have the window gloss over and show the dreaded Not Responding text.
Your first move to force-close frozen programs might be to open the Task Manager, which is fine. However, this isn’t always the most efficient option. If you’d like to kill apps in Windows even faster, we’ll show you the best ways to force-close without opening the Task Manager.
How to Force Close Apps Using a Desktop Shortcut
To force close a program without the Task Manager, you can use the taskkill command. Typically, you would enter this command at the Command Prompt to kill a specific process.
However, it’s clumsy to open the command line window every time a program stops responding, and typing the command every time you want to kill an app isn’t efficient. Instead, you can force-close app windows much easier with a shortcut that automatically closes any frozen apps.
Here’s how to create a shortcut that will close frozen processes:
This command is simple to understand when you break it down:
Feel free to ask any questions, Happy Learning!?
Your first move to force-close frozen programs might be to open the Task Manager, which is fine. However, this isn’t always the most efficient option. If you’d like to kill apps in Windows even faster, we’ll show you the best ways to force-close without opening the Task Manager.
How to Force Close Apps Using a Desktop Shortcut
To force close a program without the Task Manager, you can use the taskkill command. Typically, you would enter this command at the Command Prompt to kill a specific process.
However, it’s clumsy to open the command line window every time a program stops responding, and typing the command every time you want to kill an app isn’t efficient. Instead, you can force-close app windows much easier with a shortcut that automatically closes any frozen apps.
Here’s how to create a shortcut that will close frozen processes:
- Right-click an empty space on your desktop and choose New > Shortcut.
- You’ll be asked to enter a location for the shortcut. In that box, paste the following command:
This command is simple to understand when you break it down:
- taskkill is the command to kill a process, which you should do when something is frozen.
- /f tells the command to force-close the program. Without this, Windows just asks the process to terminate, which won’t work if it’s stuck.
- /fi tells the command to run only on processes that meet the following filter criteria.
- Finally, the text in quotes is the command criteria. You want it to only kill processes with a status equal to Not Responding.
- The shortcut creation box will then ask you to name your new shortcut. Call it anything you like, then press Finish.
How to Force-Close Apps Using a Keyboard Shortcut
To make this force-close process even faster, you can make a custom keyboard shortcut to run the task killer command you just made. Here’s how:- Right-click on your new shortcut and choose Properties.
- On the Shortcut tab, click in the Shortcut key box to set a custom keyboard shortcut. Windows will automatically add Ctrl + Alt to any letter you press, but you can change it to Ctrl + Shift if you like.
- Because this shortcut will momentarily launch a Command Prompt window, you should set Run to Minimized. Doing so means you won’t see a disrupting flash when you press the shortcut.
- Click OK to save changes.
Feel free to ask any questions, Happy Learning!?