Task Manager Won’t End Task: How To Force Kill It

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Updated onOctober 4, 2023

updated onOctober 4, 2023

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If you’ve ever tried to close a program in Windows only to get the dreaded‘Not Responding’ message, you know how frustrating it can be.

When a program crashes, or even hangs/freezes, your first move is usually to kill it using theTask Manager, which is perfectly fine.

Sometimes Windows will even give you options to either close the program or End Now, or wait for it to respond. But the worst part is if it glosses over with a grayed out screen and a constantly rotating circle that shows the program isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

Moreover, there are programs that can freeze without alerting you, but, if you’d like to fix the problem whenthe task manager can’t end a task, readon.

What can I do if Task Manager won’t end a task?

Here you can find some preliminary fixes to try out before applying more complicated solutions:

1. Use the Taskkill command

This involves using the Command Prompt to kill a specificprocess, though it is cumbersome to keep opening it each time a program freezes or stops responding. To do this:

The Taskkillcommandkills aprocess that is not responding or is frozen, by telling thecommandto forcefully kill the specifictask, and run only onprocessesthat meet the filter criteria (which is the text in quotes). This way, only theprocesswith the Not Responding status will be killed.

You can hasten thisprocessusing a keyboard shortcut. To do this:

You can also use the steps below to kill the non-responsiveprocessinWindows 10:

2. Use ALT+F4

This is a keyboard shortcut that performs the same program closing effect as tapping the X on the top right corner of a program window. To do this:

3. Use Task Manager to force quit

If the above solutions didn’t help solveWindows 10won’t end task problem, try usingTask Managerto force the unresponsive program to quit. To do this:

Note: If you get a warning saying “Do you want to end theprocesstree of [program file name], it is okay. It means the selected program will be closed and any otherprocessesit started that froze. This should help you get rid of the end task not working in Task Manager issue.

4. Create a new admin profile

IfWindows 10won’t endtasks, it may indicate acorrupted profile. To resolve this, create a new admin profile and use it for a while. If it works, move your files to the new profile and delete the old one.

After creating a new account and login, try runningChkdskin repair mode to check for any files that may have been damaged and correct them. To do this:

Chkdsk will run after you restart and take some time to complete (about two hours or so). Once it finishes, boot normally and login normally and see if thetasksare working well again.

Were you able to resolve theTask Manager won’t end task issue using the above solutions? Let us know in the comments section below.

Task Manager Won’t End Task: How To Force Kill It#

What can I do if Task Manager won’t end a task?#

1. Use the Taskkill command#

2. Use ALT+F4#

3. Use Task Manager to force quit#

4. Create a new admin profile#