If a program in Windows is not responding, there are a number of things you can do. You can wait until the application is closed by Windows itself or you can close the program manually. Forcefully closing programs in Windows may result in loss of unsaved data.
If the program in Windows does not close automatically and the app gets stuck with an error message such as “Program is not responding”, you can force close the app yourself. In this article I will explain to you how to force close a program in Windows.
Force close program in Windows
Close the app via key combination
To quickly close an application, you can press the key combination ALT + F4 simultaneously on your keyboard.
This key combination is useful if the application hangs but you don't see any options in Windows to help you force close the program.
Close the app via task manager
Every application in Windows, or a Windows service is displayed in Windows task management. Task manager is an application in Windows that allows you to quickly see which processes are active in Windows and, where necessary, start and close these processes.
Right-click on the Windows taskbar. In the menu, click on Task Manager. You can also press CTRL + ALT + DEL on your keyboard and then choose Task Manager from the menu.
In task manager, find the application that is not responding. Right-click on the name of this application and choose End. Windows will now force the process to close.
Close the app via Command Prompt
The command prompt in Windows is versatile. You can solve many problems in Windows with Command Prompt by using applications from Microsoft. You can also close processes via the command prompt. This is useful if task management doesn't work, or if you handle it in a script.
In the Windows search bar type: cmd. Right-click on the Command Prompt result. Choose Run as administrator from the menu.
In the Command Prompt cmd-let it is important to first locate the active Windows processes.
To display the running processes type: tasklist in the Command Prompt. You will now get a list of running processes. In this list you must identify the process you want to close by the process name.
In this example I use “Microsoft Edge”. The process name is “msedge.exe”. In the command prompt, type: taskkill /F /IM msedge.exe
Taskkill is the application in Windows that will kill the process. The argument “/F” stands for Force. The argument “/IM” stands for image name, or the name of the process to be closed.
I hope I was able to help you force close an application in Windows. Thank you for reading!