How to kill or close all running programs in Windows quickly

Posted on October 24, 2007 at 11:18 am

SmartClose is a free Windows utility that you can use to quickly close all programs currently running in Windows. This can be quite useful, for example, when you have to shutdown all running programs before installing a new application. I find that quite annoying because I usually have 10 different things running and I have to manually close them one by one and then re-open them once I’ve installed my program.

That’s where SmartClose really makes things a lot easier. With SmartClose, the process is fast and automatic, as it takes a snapshot of all of your currently running programs, and not only closes all of your applications for you, but also restores them later on. This is actually a very useful program for many people because you can startup 4 to 5 of your favorite apps and then save a snapshot, which you can them simply restore at any time by using the program. It can even restore Explorer and Internet Explorer windows to their previous locations on the screen.

That way instead of having to click on 5 different icons, etc, you can quickly start up applications using SmartClose. Another really nice feature about SmartClose is that you can configure it to shutdown or stop Windows services also. It actually comes with a list of services that it deems as closable, but you can add or subtract if you know what you’re doing. The great thing about SmartClose is that it’s not stupid and won’t close out services that Windows needs in order to be able to run.

Once you have it installed, you can begin by creating a snapshot and closing all programs, restoring a snapshot (restore apps), or changing the program settings.

The program also has a good number of configuration options as show below:

General Options

Close Programs

Restore Settings

Service Settings

I tested it out on my computer and it worked very well. I opened about 10 applications including Outlook, Photoshop, Firefox, etc and then saved a snapshot and shut everything down. I then proceeded to restore the snapshot and I had all my programs back up and running in no time! Pretty cool app and definitely very useful on a day to day basis! Enjoy!

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7 Responses to “How to kill or close all running programs in Windows quickly”

Nirmal said on : October 25th, 2007 at 3:16 am

Never used this application, but how much resource does it take?

akishore said on : October 25th, 2007 at 7:55 am

Nirmal,

It’s not too bad at all. Actually, it doesn’t run continuously either in the background, you have to start it up each time. So it’s not a big resource hog or anything.

Aseem

ReviewSaurus said on : October 25th, 2007 at 7:56 am

You really do that ? I mean I hardly close any application before installing any software. I’ve never experienced any problems till this date!

akishore said on : October 25th, 2007 at 10:55 am

Well sometimes I close things and sometimes I don’t. But I really liked this application for it’s ability to quickly load up my most used programs.