End Unresponsive Programs in Windows with Process Assassin
Posted on March 14, 2010 at 5:08 am
Software hang-ups are a source of immeasurable frustration. It is amazing to think how many hours we waste waiting on an unresponsive program to either do something or close. The Windows Task Manager can take eons to close a program, and if it cannot close it, the only recourse is to restart the entire computer.
Process Assassin is a small piece of software designed to kill unresponsive programs immediately, without closing any of your other open programs. This means software hang-ups are a minor glitch in your day, rather than a banging-head-against-keyboard travesty.
Specific options are available for each kind of potential unresponsive offender. For basic Windows programs, there is a button to kill Explorer, Command Line, Task Manager, Kernel processes, Media Player and even Live Messenger.
Microsoft Office’s applications can be particularly ornery, especially for those of us who stack multiple, huge video files into our PowerPoint presentations. Besides the normal offenders (Word, Excel and PowerPoint), Process Assassin can kill Outlook, Onenote, Picture Manager, Access and even Publisher.
Web browsers crash probably more than any of the other programs on our computers. Process Assassin has a button for each of our favorites, including Chrome, FireFox and Internet Explorer.
The final tab in Process Assassin’s repertoire is simply called other programs, and is designed to kill a select few of the other programs we use, such as Pidgin, Nero, BitTorrent and Thunderbird.
For those programs not on the pre-defined lists, you can simply click the great big Assassinate button and choose the non-responsive program from the list of running programs.
The program downloads as a zip file, and once extracted, it runs straight from its folder. So, as long as you can easily reach the folder where you store it, you can terminate programs quickly.
Process Assassin is available on Software Dynanmic’s Web site. It is designed to work with Windows versions XP or later.
» Filed Under Free Software Downloads
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How do I get Process Assassin?
How can I figure out what is causing a program to hang? I don’t mind killing the process, but it’s starting to get annoying. Also, it’s not just crap cheap software, it’s Office that has started freezing!?
There is a modification of the registry that will make Windows close any application Windows finds unresponsive.
Use REGEDIT to go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Modify the REG_SZ entry AutoEndTasks to a value of 1
john, I foloowed your advice but did not see the last entry you mentioned: this ‘REG_SZ entry AutoEndTasks’ I see a REZ_sz but not the autoendtask. You have to be really specific when typing things like this because it can be mis-read. Especially when punching in the wrong figures in windows.