Ctrl + Alt + Delete = Powerless

[AppleQueso]

Task manager was never that good anway. Many are the times that I've called up task manager to kill a task, only to be told that the app is not responding, and asking if it should end now. Click "end now" and nothing happens. Is a Windows equivalent to 'kill -9 <pid>' really that hard to implement?

I find I actually have to go and kill the process itself usually.

[J T]

CTRL+Shift+Escape goes straight to task manager, so it is faster when things get bogged down. And you can hit it one handed.

That's handy! Thanks fastbilly1

[MrPopo]

Task manager was never that good anway. Many are the times that I've called up task manager to kill a task, only to be told that the app is not responding, and asking if it should end now. Click "end now" and nothing happens. Is a Windows equivalent to 'kill -9 <pid>' really that hard to implement?

I find I actually have to go and kill the process itself usually.

That's what I usually do, and it is the equivalent to kill -9 <pid>. The program manager is just the nice pretty one for people who don't know computers.

[YoshiEgg25]

Task manager was never that good anway. Many are the times that I've called up task manager to kill a task, only to be told that the app is not responding, and asking if it should end now. Click "end now" and nothing happens. Is a Windows equivalent to 'kill -9 <pid>' really that hard to implement?

I find I actually have to go and kill the process itself usually.

That's what I usually do, and it is the equivalent to kill -9 <pid>. The program manager is just the nice pretty one for people who don't know computers.

Exactly. Killing it through processes is much quicker and just as safe.

Protip: Don't stop the process "explorer.exe". One time I thought that was Internet Explorer and wondered why the hell it was running. Stopped the process, and whaddyaknow, the Start Bar was completely gone!

[dsheinem]

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Protip: Don't stop the process "explorer.exe". One time I thought that was Internet Explorer and wondered why the hell it was running. Stopped the process, and whaddyaknow, the Start Bar was completely gone!

sometimes it does make sense to end explorer, but you can just start it again from the tskmgr (file>run)

[YoshiEgg25]

Protip: Don't stop the process "explorer.exe". One time I thought that was Internet Explorer and wondered why the hell it was running. Stopped the process, and whaddyaknow, the Start Bar was completely gone!

sometimes it does make sense to end explorer, but you can just start it again from the tskmgr (file>run)

Good to know, thanks dsh.

[pakopako]

Protip: Don't stop the process "explorer.exe". One time I thought that was Internet Explorer and wondered why the hell it was running. Stopped the process, and whaddyaknow, the Start Bar was completely gone!

sometimes it does make sense to end explorer, but you can just start it again from the tskmgr (file>run)

Good to know, thanks dsh.

Windows also has a habit of "reviving" explorer.exe if it becomes unresponsive and you have to shut it down via Task Manager.

Also, multiple forms of malware (from ad-ware to spy-ware to viruses) can masquerade or corrupt your version of explorer.exe

Task manager was never that good anway... Is a Windows equivalent to 'kill -9 <pid>' really that hard to implement

Apparently so due to the pipe-lined multi-tasking structure. But that's me and my Win95 mentality; not sure what Win7 is doing these days.
(Isn't it "Kill -9 -1" ... or is that for all processes?)

[CRTGAMER]

CTRL+Shift+Escape goes straight to task manager, so it is faster when things get bogged down. And you can hit it one handed.

That's handy! Thanks fastbilly1

That is a good one, THANKYOU!

[Hobie-wan]

sometimes it does make sense to end explorer, but you can just start it again from the tskmgr (file>run)

Indeed. If I'm remoted into a customer's XP machine and I've ripped out some registry mess and they have left for the day, if I'm not sure if it will reconnect me I'll sometimes cheat by killing and restarting Explorer so it loads up a fresh copy of the registry without the things I removed.

I agree with others though. If something is hung up and you know what it is called to find it in the processes tab, don't even mess with the applications tab. Just remember that if you're on Vista/W7, click on the 'show processes from all users' if you know what you're looking for.