In today's realities, the most popular OS family is Windows. Even system administrators and professional programmers who use other solutions have to deal with Windows from time to time. The trouble with this operating system is that anyone can write software for it. Testing is often not carried out very carefully. And this leads to freezes of the software or the entire OS of the end user. Sometimes the products of famous developers present surprises and stop responding to teams. How to close the program if it does not close, read the article.
Expectation
The easiest way to turn off a hung program is to wait. 5-10 minutes is usually enough. In the vast majority of cases, the application will close on its own or complete all resource-intensive algorithms and continue normal operation.
Computer games, office suites, programs for complex mathematical calculations, antiviruses - all this requires considerable resources. When a computer cannot cope with a suddenly increased load, applications freeze.
The disadvantage of this method is one - waiting requires free time.
How to close a program if it does not close? Use hotkeys
This method is as simple as the previous one. Left-click on the application window and press Alt + F4 on the keyboard, sometimes you can use F5.
With a high probability, the utility will shut down or a window will appear on the screen asking you to close it forcibly. The operating system will then continue to function normally. After such completion of the program, wait a couple of minutes for its process to really stop performing all operations.
Task bar
How to close a program if it does not close using hot keys? Hover over the designation of the hung utility in the taskbar and right-click on this area. In the displayed context menu, click on the “Close” item. After that, the software often terminates its work.
Task Manager
Task Manager is a powerful utility built into Windows that can be used to close a hung application. To run this tool, right-click on a free area of the taskbar and select the desired menu section. Another way to launch the “dispatcher” is to enter the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + Del.
On the application tab, you can see the table with the names of all running user applications. Highlight the desired line and press the Del button on the keyboard. Then confirm your intention. Usually a hung utility closes immediately. But how to close a program if it does not close using this method?
Go to the “Processes” tab and find here the name of the application executable file. If the search does not return results, it makes sense to go back, right-click on the program name and select the item with the inscription "Go to the process." To close the application, press Del.
I must say that in the process table you can see information about how much RAM each program takes, what is the percentage of CPU utilization and network resources. This helps to understand which particular utility is hanging. If you find suspicious processes in the task manager list, then you need to scan your computer for viruses. It is possible that because of them freezes occur.
Command line
When a process running in the background hangs so that even the task manager is unable to help, you have to use the command line. Work in it is possible only in text mode. There are no buttons, check-boxes, interactive tips here. This is similar to performing actions on the DOS operating system.
How to close programs on the computer using the command line? Follow these steps:
- Open the Start menu and follow the path "Programs - Accessories - Command Prompt". Right-click on the last caption and run the utility as administrator.
- In the main area of the window that opens, enter tasklist and press the Enter key.
- A table is displayed. It will show all the processes running in the OS.
- Find the name of the hung application in the list. On the same line is the PID number. It must be remembered, since it is not possible to forcefully close the program without an exact value.
- Type taskkill / pid __. Underline replace with the number mentioned in the previous paragraph. After that, the process will be completed.
The command line is a professional tool, but even it cannot 100% guarantee the solution to all problems if application freezes occur systematically. When the products running on most machines stably hang on your PC, it means that an urgent scan of your computer for viruses is necessary.
Also, in some cases, comprehensive OS optimization can help. Defragmenting, cleaning up hard drives from debris, deleting invalid registry entries - without this, Windows will start to crash over time. Do not forget about the maintenance of the physical components of the computer. These include such procedures as cleaning the cooling radiators from dust, timely replacement of thermal paste, checking hard drives for bad sectors, monitoring the temperature of the main components.