Many a times programs in Windows stop responding and no matter what you do you do not get anything except the infamous not responding message. The only option which users try is using the Task Manager and either kill the process tree or just the program, whichever works.
Below is the list of free applications which allows you to kill any hanged program in different fashion. Some program will let you kill a set of predefined apps while some will let you mouse hover and destroy it. Though it is possible to kill it from command line or use a registry hack for auto kill after some time but if you are not geek, try this list.
WiXKill
This windows application which not only kills or terminate program ( which might be hanged or you want to kill ) but also lets you manage and set advanced options to decide how to to terminate kill windows applications.
Before using the program you will need to set how to terminate the applications to be killed. When you activate WiXkill to terminate program it allows you to select the target window or the object with mouse. When you hover the mouse it turns green and prints the process name.
WiXkill options has to be set so it knows how to handle the application when its pointed by the mouse. You can
- Hide |Close | Exit
- Kill Thread ( This will terminate any other process which depends on program top be terminated)
- Kill process.
After you are done with this, all you need is to use the program which is activated from the tray or shortcut key WINDOW-ALT-X combination key. Press ESC key in case you want to quit targeting windows.
If you aren’t conformable to use this way, WixKill comes with screen which lists all the running process. This is easy to use but then you will have to know the process name. Select any process and then choose to kill.
Overall its an excellent options on killing windows application which either dont response or are consuming. You can also kill it using task manager but it doesn’t lets you target windows application by mouse which is why you need this program. Download a copy of Wixkill
Close Many :
When you are running many programs at the same time, it is possible that bunch of them might stop responding together and even after waiting the only option is to kill the running process or service on by one.
This takes a bit of time but if you use Close Many program of Skrommel, Life will become easier for you. This program allows you to select more then one program and then kill them in a row. Obviously internally it does it all one by one but at least your part is reduced.
This service also allows you to select multiple windows service to be restarted together. Very Handy I would say. You can download the program from here
Auto Kill Any process :
This program comes with a Hit List feature which lets you save set of annoying programs which can be terminated in batch by just loading the list. If you are aware of certain program which you use add it to the list. Adding to the list is easy and can be picked from the Running Process Tab.
As soon as you run the program for the first time it creates a text file which would contain your programs of hit list. You can select programs by using the check box and add it for future reference. Download it from here ( Works with Windows 7 )
What Is Hang :
If you are a developer, WhatIsHang can be an awesome resource to find out what the program is getting hanged, specially if you are developing a Windows Application.
For every program hanged, you get the following details : ( Very useful for Windows Programmers )
- Strings Found in Stack.
- Call Stack.
- Stack Data
- Processor Registers
- Memory Data
- All Threads.
You also get to know the Process ID, Thread ID, Process Path.
This application does an auto refresh so if you want to wait for couple of minutes to see if the program gets out of frozen state, you can do so. For further analysis all these data can be exported in form of reports either for individual program or for all the programs in the list in HTML format.
YAMP :
Yet another Process monitor which also works for report machine is one of the power process manager we had seen till here. There is 2 major feature which I liked most :
- Its ribbon menu based which has made classification much easier.
- Secondly the classification are not just limited to process but goes into Network, Services, Threads, Handles, tasks and processes.
- Process Finder which is just like a sniper and useful when you are not sure what the name of the process on the list or the list is just too heavy to search.
- You can Pause, Resume and Kill any program and even launch it again.
XKill for Windows
We have talked about How to kill hanged program from command line [ Windows ] which requires some skills on using the command line and understanding the commands. In short some people might not be very comfortable with CLI utility and Here comes an alternative GUI program, Windows XKill which is comparable to XKill program I have seen in Linux.
Widows XKill is configured to get activated when you hit ALT + CTRL + BACKSPACE together. This shows up a skull icon which you can just drop it on any application which you see is frozen and not responding for a long time. This is definitely faster than using Task manager.
Process Manager
Process Manager is an excellent free windows application which allows you to kill any hanged program with a right-click. Just select the application right-click and click Kill. This makes life a little easier for people who are bugged with hanged program many a times. This works in Windows 7, Vista and Windows Xp.
We had talked about auto killing hanged program before but this option is lot better. Another advantage you get with this useful software is you can even prioritize your program normal to real-time which you don’t get it in Visual X Kill ( Which you can use to just kill a program with mouse ) . You get all these options in task manager but again that is 2 steps more on killing program.
Download Process Manager
Process Freezer :
Process Freezer, which lets you pause any running process and resume it again later any time. This is pretty useful when you find any of the process taking too much of memory consumption and disrupts you from doing anything else.
However In my opinion I dont think this will work effectively in all scenarios like Hardware input output operation. In case process is trying to save something on your physical media and you pause it, it might result in locking of that area and might not work right again later. But what I would suggest is to try to pause it for may be max of 30 seconds and resume it again to see if the process stops consuming too much of resources.
I am creating a poll to see how many of you would really like to pause it. Just answer yes or no.
[polldaddy poll=2291082]
Download Process Freezer from here ( Scroll Down till end )
