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It'south not uncommon for an application to terminate responding on Windows 10. When it happens, you can force the app to shut down, effectively unfreezing said application. Here's how to force quit an app on Windows x.

Try a Keyboard Shortcut

It's frustrating when an app yous're using suddenly freezes. We've all done it—exasperatingly clicking the "X" button at to the lowest degree 20 times to close the frozen programme. There's a improve style.

With the frozen application in focus, press Alt+F4 on your keyboard to close it. If the Windows desktop is in focus instead, yous'll see a "Close Down Windows" prompt instead.

This won't always work—some frozen applications just won't reply.

Alt F4 keyboard shorcut window

Force Quit Using Task Manager

As the name implies, Task Manager is a tool that shows which apps are currently running (equally well as other data like resource usage and process stats) and allows yous to manage them accordingly.

To open Job Manager, you can press Ctrl+Shift+Esc on your keyboard or right-click the Windows task bar and select "Task Manager" from the menu.

Task Manager option from the task bar menu

With Job Manager open, select the task you desire to force quit, and and then select "End Task."

If y'all don't encounter the name of the app in the list hither, click "More Details" and find information technology in the list on the Processes tab.

End task from task manager

The frozen plan will now shut.

RELATED: Windows Task Manager: The Complete Guide

Forcefulness Quit an App Using Command Prompt

Y'all can find and force quit tasks from the Control Prompt. Open Control Prompt past typing "cmd" in the Windows search bar, so selecting the "Command Prompt" app from the search results.

Command Prompt app in windows search bar

In Control Prompt, typetasklist and press "Enter." In one case executed, Command Prompt will display a list of currently running programs, services, and tasks.

tasklist command in command prompt

The listing can absolutely be a chip overwhelming, so just call up to suspend .exe to the end of the plan proper noun. Once y'all're ready to strength quit the programme, execute this control:

taskkill /im <program>.exe

So, if I wanted to forcefulness quit Notepad, I'd run this command:

taskkill /im notepad.exe

taskkill command

A success message will be returned, letting y'all know you've successfully forcefulness quit the problematic application.

Of course, you can always reboot or close downwards your PC to close an app that's actually stuck.

RELATED: 10 Means to Open the Control Prompt in Windows ten

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