How To Close A Stuck Program In Windows 7,Vista,XP

Do you have one or two unresponsive programs running but you don’t know how to close them? An unresponsive program can be any program on your computer that might get freeze up and does not respond to your actions, this unresponsiveness of a program can occur due to many reasons, but the main reasons include low virtual memory, low RAM or generic windows errors. Many steps could be taken to troubleshoot an unresponsive program but the easiest way is through Windows Task Manager.

Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc altogether, when you’re finished pressing them, a Windows Task Manager window will open up.

task manager

Select the Applications tab.

application tab

Click on the application’s name you are having trouble with,and want to close it down, at the bottom of the Task Manager window click the End Task button.

end task

This action may close the program instantly but in some situations you will get a message stating that the program is not responding, on the given options click on the End now button.  In this way Windows sometimes may become unstable and other running programs may slow down, but Windows usually recover itself by restarting the main Explorer.exe process.

Note: If the Program is not listed in Application tab, then go to Processes tab and you will find it there. Check the Description next to every process that is running, select the program that you want to end and click End Process.

Voila, you are done with the unresponsive program!

  • Share this article!

    • Digg this!
    • Bookmark on Reddit
    • Bookmark at Delicious
    • Stumble this!
    • Share this post at Facebook
    • Tweet this!
    • Share on Yahoo! Buzz
    • Add AddictiveTips to your Technorati favorites
    • Share on Friendfeed
This entry was posted in Windows and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

8 Comments

  1. bob
    Posted December 12, 2008 at 5:41 am | Permalink

    vista doesnt use ctrl alt delete to open this program to close stalled programs. doh. im on a quest to find out what it is in vista that opens it…i think its got esc in there somewhere.

    major fail on your behalf pooter doodes.

  2. Posted December 12, 2008 at 1:23 pm | Permalink

    Bob it does, when you press ctrl + alt + del, it will give you a list of options, among them select “Start Task Manager” and you are in.

  3. Posted February 1, 2009 at 6:22 am | Permalink

    This is how i usually deal with not responding programs, but this time the program does not close in any way. Any other advice/tip?

  4. hugh
    Posted October 30, 2009 at 10:54 pm | Permalink

    can,t logon to internet explorer

  5. hugh
    Posted October 31, 2009 at 2:54 am | Permalink

    can,t logon to internet explorer

  6. hugh
    Posted October 31, 2009 at 7:54 am | Permalink

    can,t logon to internet explorer

  7. Eric
    Posted June 4, 2010 at 11:36 am | Permalink

    Hi, Thanks very much for that Windows 7 is a PITA but this helps a lot, thanksssss

  8. thankies!
    Posted July 29, 2010 at 12:22 am | Permalink

    thank you so much! (:

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*
*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>


More in Windows (5 of 5 articles)