Windows Vista FAQ: How to Terminate or killing a process

Even though Windows has come a long way in the past 15 years, sometimes the operating system can't prevent buggy or poorly written applications from becoming unresponsible. We can terminate these applications by using Windows Task Manager.

Here are the solutions:

Using a graphical user interface:

1. Open the Windows Task Manager (taskmgr.exe).

Windows Task Manager can be opened by press ctrl+alt+del then choose "Start Task Manager", or Right-click the taskbar and choose Task Manager, or by type taskmgr.exe on Run.

2. Click on the Processes tab.

3. If you do not see the process you want to set, be sure the box beside 'Show processes from all users' is checked.

4. Right-click on the target process, select 'End Process', and select the desired priority.

Using a command-line interface:

The following command kills a process by PID:

> taskkill -pid

Notes:
PID means Process Identifier.
Use the /f option to forcefully kill the process.


What's New in Windows Vista's Task Manager?

One of the new features of Task Manager is the capability to create a minidump file of an application that is running. You can right-click an application or process that is running and select Create Dump File . You will be presented with a dialog box that shows you where that file has been written. You can use this feature to discover why a particular application might be crashing so often; conversely, if a process has already crashed and is no longer responding, you can try to discover the cause.

After you have the dump file, you need to install the symbols for Vista (which you can get at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/symbolpkg.mspx) and then install the latest debugging tools (which you can find at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx). We can run the Windows Debugger (WinDbg), load the symbols, open the crashdump file, and try to determine what went wrong.

Obviously, that sounds a lot simpler than it really is. Reading dump files is a specialized talent that requires a bit of study and research on the Web. But there is a starter article for beginners at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/debugstart.mspx.