It can be frustrating when you have an application that won’t respond. You click the X but nothing happens., it appears to be frozen. But manually turning off your computer by hitting the power button can damage your computer. Instead of waiting for the application to respond, let’s explore how to force quit applications on a Windows 10 device in three ways.
This is for the Windows 10 operating system
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Keyboard Shortcut
Click on the frozen application to bring it into focus. Now, press Alt+F4 to close it.
If you don’t select a window or application, this shortcut may cause your computer to shut down or you may receive the Shut Down Windows command prompt.
Use the Task Manager
Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch the Task Manager. Alternatively, you can right click the Windows task bar and select Task Manager from the menu. Refer to below image:
You will see a list of currently running applications. Now click on the task you want to force quit, then select End Task. See below image:
If you don’t see your application in the list, hit the More derails button in the bottom left corner of the window. You should find your task in the Processes tab. Now, click End Task. Your frozen program should now close. See following image;
Use the Command Prompt
Click the Windows+R to open the Cortana search box. Now enter cmd and press Enter or hit the OK button. See below image:
In the Command Prompt, enter tasklist and press Enter. This will display a list of currently running programs and tasks along with associated information. Refer to below image:
Locate your frozen application. Now, enter taskkill/im {name_of_program}.exe.” Replace {name_of_program} with the name of the program you want to force quit. Remember to leave a space between taskill/im and the name of the program. Finally, press the Enter key.
For example, let’s force quit the calculator program. You would enter the following command:
taskkill/im calculator.exe
then press the Enter key. See below image:
A message will be returned indicating if you have successfully force quit the application. See following image:
If the above methods fail to work, you can reboot or shutdown your computer to kill the frozen app.
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