Kill Frozen Programs in Windows

If you're a Windows user, it pretty much goes without saying that you've encountered a frozen program before. Often these jammed apps get labeled with the dreaded "Not Responding" message and simply refuse to do anything, even close. Usually, the only solution is to open the task manager, find the appropriate process, and choose to close it. Fortunately, a quicker and easier way exists.

Instead of pressing “Ctrl + Alt + Del” to kill a task that is not responding, why not create a shortcut on your desktop to do the same? Here is how.

1. Right click on the desktop. From the menu hover over New and click on Text Document.
2. Name it “taskkill.bat” make sure there is no .txt at the end of the file.
3. Hit “Yes” in the dialog box that asks you do you want to change the extension.
4. Right click and select edit. This will open a blank notepad.
5. Type the following lines:

@echo off
taskkill.exe /f /fi “status eq not responding”
exit

6. Save it. File -> Save and close notepad.
7. Now any time a program freezes just double click "taskkill.bat". In fact this will kill all programs that are not responding.

By the way it is portable as well, so you can put it on a usb stack and use it on any windows machine.

That's it.

From here, you can change the icon to make it prettier, or even set a shortcut key if double-clicking is too much work for you. When you launch the shortcut, your computer will automatically identify and terminate any programs that the computer deems "Not Responding." This useful little trick works on Windows XP Pro (but not XP Home), all versions of Vista, and Windows 7, so give it a try.