I’ve been a mostly happy user of Windows 8.1, but what drives me bugfuck is that I don’t think I’ve successfully a killed a single locked up app with the task manager. If something locks up, it’s gonna be there until I reboot of log out. WTF? Have I had bad luck or is this utterly basic function actually broken?
No, most people report that it works - but they do complain that they can’t get it to grab attention from the locked app. The fix for that is to open the task manager and select options->Always on Top. If that isn’t the problem, one user reports that locking Windows sometimes lets Task Manager finish ending tasks.
I gave up and downloaded Process Explorer - works much better for me
“If something locks up, it’s gonna be there until I reboot of log out.”
No, just walk away. (Just walk away, I’m serious). It’s a Windows thingy and it takes time. Others may come along and explain why.
I’ve not found it different in performance from Task Manager in Win7, and it seems a little better than WinXP.
But I’m not dealing with locked up applications on an especially regular basis, so if this is happening a lot, I can’t help wonder if there is some deeper rooted problem such as faulty memory - which could crash an application AND nobble Task Manager, all at once.
That’s true. Windows will sometimes declare an application ‘not responding’ when it’s just busy doing something.
I personally think it’s amazing how long it takes. On my windows 7 PC, ctr+alt+delete is the “fuck this” switch - when I press that, no matter how clogged the PC is, it drops what it’s doing and goes to the lock screen. On my windows 8 laptop, it takes upwards of a minute. What the hell?
It’s quite possible if I simply waited, it would have gone away. But the complaint is still valid, in Win XP, Win Vista, and Win 7 I was used to instant results.
madrabbitwoman, good idea, I’ll download Process Explorer the next time I have a stubborn locked up task. You’re talking about the one that’s part of the Windows Sysinternals suite, right?
What programs are you using that lock up all the time? We can probably suggest alternatives. Otherwise, I’d agree with Mangetout that there’s probably something else going on.
I agree. I don’t really understand why it does that in Windows 8.
I don’t know the right terminology for this, but I thought hitting ctrl-alt-del was supposed to make the processor give highest priority to opening the task manager. That way you can use it to shut down whatever is causing the problem. But in Win 8, I see the computer doing all sorts of stuff BEFORE the task manager comes up, whether the computer is clogged up or not.
For what it’s worth, my problems with things locking up and bogging down is simply because my processor is kind of weak and the memory isn’t quite adequate. It’s usually ok, but if I open too many applications at once, I’m fucked. The task manager problem is especially annoying if I’ve opened that app by accident.
Thank you for that. It’s bloody stupid that that isn’t the default, but hopefully in the future if I do need to shut down a non-responsive program that will help. After a while, I learnt to simply use the ctrl-alt-del screen to sign out and then sign back in, because that actually worked.
I don’t know if this helps, but ctrl-shift-esc will take you directly to Task Manager (on any version of Windows). I’d be interested to know if that works OK in the OP’s scenario.
Ctrl+alt+del hasn’t been the command for Task Manager for some time now. It’s ctrl+shift+esc, as Mangetout points out.
I do wish Windows would prioritize it over everything else, though. You could try Process Tamer to help with this. It looks like it hasn’t been updated since 2009, but from what I can tell, it still works.
The delay is a bug in Windows 8 that was supposed to have been fixed. The process that handles the keyboard shortcuts locks up. I always avoided it by opening the task manger by right clicking on the taskbar. It would sometimes take a bit longer than Windows 7, but not by much.
As for killing processes, it’s always better to do that from the process tab. Windows has always tried to shut down the app cleanly when you just select the window. The process tab, on the other hand, goes straight to the kill switch.
If that isn’t working well enough for you, there are other apps that will try even harder to kill apps. Process Hacker will use around 12 different methods to try and kill an app, even including using some undocumented features of Windows. It’s like Process Explorer on steroids. And Process Explorer is like Task Manager on steroids. So PH is a roided-out mofo of an app.
I don’t use any programs that lock up all the time. But occasionally, pretty much any program can lock up.
My problem isn’t getting to Task Manager, but that when I tell TM to kill a locked up program that it fails to kill it.
I’ll check that out, thanks!
Hi, I have been using Windows 7 and I am not familiar with Window 8 manager, except for my daughter who is currently using it. So far, she shared that she has not encountered issues with her Windows 8. In fact , it is doing good. However, Thanks for sharing this information about that kind of problem. This will be of help for us in the future since I might be changing to Windows 8 soon.
You are correct
This does sound like it might be caused by some underlying common issue that isn’t actually Win8 or Task Manager. A bad driver or hardware (esp memory) fault, perhaps.
Perhaps I’ve given the incorrect impression that I’m complaining about the frequency of programs locking up. I’m not; I do not think I’m getting any more program lockups that I’ve had with previous versions of Windows and/or on the many, many different PCs I’ve used at work and home over the years. But they can and do happen, every once in a while. Perhaps more for me than the general user, since I am software developer and a “power user”.
My complaint is not about the programs locking up more frequently, but that on the infrequent times it happens, Windows 8.1 Task Manager, for me, has often (maybe 100 percent of the time) failed to kill these locked up programs.