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Basically the question is what is the Windows equivalent to Linux' changing tty, login in and killing processes from there?

Situation: Once in a while I switch back to Windows to play games when there seems no reasonable way to get them running under Linux. Problem is, that some of these games tend to crash frequently (screen freeze). However, when I try to open the task manager, I will get a black screen or simply cannot get out of the game, requiring me to restart my computer. Being a while into Linux, were you are usually not required to restart just because of unimportant applications, I figured that Windows might have considered the problem, too. Might be I want to run another important application in background that should not stop during playtime.

tl;dr How to kill processes in windows, or interact with the commandline when it's not possible to switch to Task Manager rsp. Alt-Tab to any other window, including commandline and PowerShell via offline solutions that require no additional applications?

Edit: What I already tried, but did not work ingame:

Try go get to cmd/taskmanager:

  • Ctrl+Alt+Del <-- proves that the machine is still responsive as it does switch to the menu where I can select task manager, but once I click I just get a task bar with black windows above or the frozen game screen, but no working window...

  • Ctrl+Shift+Esc

  • Win+x

  • Win+r

Try to exit application:

  • Alt+F4

  • press red X-button at right corner (not responsive when frozen)

Try to switch to other windows:

  • Alt+Tab

Open new virtual desktop:

  • Win+Tab
  • Ctrl+Win+Tab

It seems, Windows key bindings are context-sensitive. Any other options how to force quit an unresponsive application?

What would (probably) work:

  • Switch user via Ctrl+Alt+Del (but it seems excessive to create another user just for the purpose of killing a process)
  • sign out, sign in (but this also closes applications that should still be responsive, which is what I want to avoid, but at least better than a full restart)

I figured that until now, the following seems to work (the latter is not always available, but the former seems to work reliably up to now):

  • Task Manager -> Options > Always on Top
  • I created a shortcut for C:\Windows\System32\taskkill.exe /f /fi "status eq not responding" which I pinned to taskbar

However, this does not seem to scale well, what if I need more than just close a process via Task Manager or call another command, e.g. not kill all processes that do not respond but just one specific for which I yet have to figure out the PID?

kaiya
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2 Answers2

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Use Powershell. Start it as Administrator, then use Get-Process in combination with Stop-Process to list and stop processes/tasks. To list the tasks/processes:

Get-Process

To list the processes that are not responding:

Get-Process | Where { !$_.Responding }

To stop non-responding tasks:

Get-Process | Where { !$_.Responding } | Stop-Process -Force

To stop tasks based on task ID, first get the processes. Note the ID of the process you want to stop, then run the Stop-Process cmdlet. Replace IDofProcess with the process ID

Get-Process
Stop-Process -PID IDofPRocess -Force
Reddy Lutonadio
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You can use the free AutoHotkey.

The following script will kill the process owning the active window when pressing Ctrl+Alt+K:

^!k::                                         ; Ctrl+Alt+K
WinGet, PID, PID, % "ahk_id " WinExist("A")   ; Get process owning active window
Process, Close, %PID%                         ; Close this process

After installing AutoHotKey, put the script in a .ahk file and double-click it to test. You may stop the script by right-click on the green H icon in the traybar and choosing Exit. To have it run on login, place it in the Startup group at C:\Users\USER-NAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.

Useful AutoHotkey documentation:

harrymc
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