# Program stops responding ... takes forever to end

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/program-stops-responding-takes-forever-to-end/557945>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 21, 2010, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/program-stops-responding-takes-forever-to-end/557945 "2010-10-21T22:08:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/program-stops-responding-takes-forever-to-end/557945/1 "2010-10-21T22:08:02Z")

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When a program stops responding, sometimes Windows will offer you an opportunity to “End Now.” How come it takes freaking forever for the program to actually close after you’ve chosen that option?

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**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/program-stops-responding-takes-forever-to-end/557945/2 "2010-10-21T22:41:10Z")

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If you look at your list of processes in the Task Manager, you’ll often find one called “dumprep.exe” after choosing “End Now”. It’s a tool preparing a report on what crashed, and what it was doing at the time, to send back to Microsoft. The crashed program won’t go away until dumprep finishes, and it can be a CPU hog–between that and the crashed program, the whole mess can just sit there for a long time.

Of course, if you have no intention of letting it send a report to MS anyway, you can just go to Task Manager-\>Processes and kill the dumprep process. That should make both the dump and the crashed program go away at once.

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**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/program-stops-responding-takes-forever-to-end/557945/3 "2010-10-21T22:48:50Z")

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Any way to deactivate it globally?

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**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/program-stops-responding-takes-forever-to-end/557945/4 "2010-10-21T23:13:09Z")

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> [@acsenray](#):
>
> Any way to deactivate it globally?

Really. It’s just wasting my time if I’m not sending in a report anyway.

Maybe try deleting it, or giving some innocuous program the same name.

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**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2010, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/program-stops-responding-takes-forever-to-end/557945/5 "2010-10-21T23:50:03Z")

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Actually, I believe there is a more official way: See [Disable Dumprep.exe in XP and Turn off Error Reporting in Vista](http://www.noheat.com/2008/01/03/disable-dumprepexe-in-xp-and-turn-off-error-reporting-in-vista/)