Windows is the most widely used operating system and this is the one for which maximum software and applications have been designed. Windows has been a good multitasking operating system and has offered a lot to its users. You can work on multiple programs with ease and keep many applications open at a time. All applications and files are handled by the operating system and they stay resident in the memory till the time they are closed. More and more applications are programmed and developed for Windows operating system and some of them are not always tested to work on the same. Such applications at times make the system to crash or go non-responsive. Not only such applications go non-responsive, but they also make other Windows applications to hang up because of memory conflicts or read and write conflicts. When an application or a program hangs up, you have no choice other than closing it and opening it again. Closing an application from its close button on the top right corner may also not work because this close button is also a part of the application. In such cases, to close the application you would need help of the controller managing all the running applications. This controller in Windows operating systems is known as the Task Manager. You can use the Task Manager to close any non-responsive application.

  • Step 1: Try to close the application from its ‘Close’ button and Windows might give you further options to close the program. If you get this option it is well and good, else go to step 2.
  • Step 2: Right click on the Task Bar and select Task Manager from the context menu. You can also press ‘Ctrl’, ’Alt’, ’Delete’ keys together to access the Task Manager.
  • Step 3: Once you have the Task Manager open, you will find tabs in that window. Click on the ‘Applications’ tab and then right click on the application which is not responding and then select ‘End Task’. This will help you in closing the application. If not then go to step 4.
  • Step 4: Before you click on ‘Processes’ Tab you must be aware of the actual .exe name of the program which you want to close. For example if you want to close Microsoft Word then you must know that its process name is winword.exe. Right click on the process and then select the option ‘End task’.

If these steps do not work, you may have to log off or restart of the system.