Occasionally, a program will stall when I’m running Windows XP. I can’t kill by closing the window, so I try to go to Task Manager to kill it. Nope … can’t “End Task” or “End Process.” About two thirds of the programs that stall on me are still resident; they just won’t die, no matter what I do to kill them.
Why can’t I kill many of these errant programs in Windows XP? Is there a utility that can kill 'em off?
If you get the resource kit (may also be a free download from Microsoft; Lotsa goodies at their site), you can use ‘TLIST’ and ‘KILL’.
TLIST give you a listing of all running processes and their corresponding ID’s.
Usage: TLIST
KILL, well, kills a process.
Usage: KILL <Process ID number, gotten from TLIST> You can also kill by process name or by wildcard. (KILL store.exe [noooo!] or KILL ms*)
If a process is started by the service manager, it’ll generally just restart as soon as you end it in task manager. Out of curiousity, what are you trying to stop? Is it a native XP process or a 3rd party?
Is that run from the command prompt? I have XP Pro and it can’t find that command.
OK, I showed my obsolescence with that one. ‘TLIST’ has been replaced with ‘TASKLIST’ in XP.
Since KILL.EXE is a resource kit utility, you can download the PSTOOLS pack from Sysinternals, which is a very reputable ulitities maker for Windows. Basically the same, but you use ‘PSINFO’ and ‘PSKILL’ instead.
Thanks! I’ll try it out!
Pretty much, they’ll be random programs that can’t be killed. WinAmp will sometimes be killable instantly; other times, it insists on running for a few more minutes. Even Netscape and IE … if it hangs, it’ll stay hung, even if you respond to the “This program appears to have stopped running” prompt.