How to End Windows Programs
http://live.pirillo.com/ - The task manager is a Windows program that shows all of the running programs on your system. Why would you need something like this? Well, imagine if a program hangs and you can't do anything about it: if you bring up the task manager you can end the program; but, how do you distinguish which programs are safe to end?
Obviously, you don't want to go around and ending random processes, because you may end up doing damage to your Windows operating system. Also, you may not know which program is running: some viruses and spyware tends to hide themselves with names similar to trusted processes.
ProcessLibrary is the most comprehensive list of processes that may be running on your system. Here you can search for a process executable or DLL and see if it is safe or not, and what you may need to do to remove the process from your system.
If you really need to end a process, in the Windows Task Manager right-click on the process you want to end and click "end process" or "end process tree."
Which process manager do you use, and how do you determine which processes are safe to end?
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4 Comments
Tom Linton
June 27th, 2007
at 5:08am
I use Process Explorer by Sysinternals. It gives a little more information laid out in an easier to read manner. It still doesn’t solve any serious problems. Yes, it can end a process, but usually my problems are more serious involving one of Windows modules. Killing one of these usually brings other things down and before you know it you need to reboot.
Now, here is a question I bet most do not know the answer to. What is the difference between “end process” and “end process tree”. I have tried both and cannot tell the difference.
Pieter Kraaima
June 29th, 2007
at 3:02am
When you kill a process you only kill that process (or application).
Now when you kill a process tree then every process running or started by that process will be killed
kill process tree:
App (killed)
–app proc2 (killed)
–app proc3 (killed)
Or kill process
App (killed)
– app proc2 (running)
– app proc3 (running)
Pieter Kraaima
June 29th, 2007
at 3:02am
When you kill a process you only kill that process (or application).
Now when you kill a process tree then every process running or started by that process will be killed
kill process tree:
App (killed)
–app proc2 (killed)
–app proc3 (killed)
Or kill process
App (killed)
– app proc2 (running)
– app proc3 (running)
Robert Rook
September 7th, 2008
at 12:27pm
So what do you do when TaskMan fails to END PROCESS or END PROCESS TREE? I need a prgram that will kill a process STONE DEAD no questions kill the SOB NOW!!!
TaskMan often fails in it’s job WIN XP Pro SP3
Thanks
Rob