{"id":10762,"date":"2010-02-26T11:22:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-26T10:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/how-to-kill-frozen-processes\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:15:50","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:15:50","slug":"how-to-kill-frozen-processes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/how-to-kill-frozen-processes\/","title":{"rendered":"How to: Kill frozen processes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I spent a over 30 minutes trying to kill an unholy mangle of <a href=\"http:\/\/spotify.en.softonic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Spotify<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/vmware-workstation.en.softonic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">VMWare<\/a> and an Excel document &#8211; it was a geek&#8217;s nightmare! When I realized that not one, but <em>three <\/em>programs had frozen, I tried to end the tasks in <strong>Task Manager<\/strong>. When I realized that that wasn&#8217;t working, I tracked them down in <strong>Processes<\/strong> and tried to exterminate them there. What happened? Nada, nothing, zilch. What&#8217;s a girl to do?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2010\/02\/tmfinal.png\" alt=\"tmfinal.png\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The reasons for my mess of frozen programs could have been many and varied. From viruses to overloaded systems, why a program (or three) might freeze is a discussion for another day. My main concern was how to get rid of them without having to resort to the old cybertrick of turning it off and on again.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>If you have a look around the internet, you&#8217;ll see that there are million supposed cures for the malady. Unfortunately, lots of them are problem-specific and, if you don&#8217;t have the time or inclination to get to the root of it, they are unreliable at best and risky at worst. What you need is a specific process-killing app.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/articles-images.sftcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2010\/02\/pk1.png\" alt=\"pk1.png\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The major thing to remember about process-snipers like <a href=\"http:\/\/process-killer.en.softonic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Process Killer<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/enditall.en.softonic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">EndItAll<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/ultimate-process-killer.en.softonic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Ultimate Process Killer<\/a>, is that they are pretty effective. This is great news if you know what you&#8217;re doing, but bad news if you take out an essential process by mistake. If you need some more advice before you start chopping programs down to size, try <a href=\"http:\/\/yet-another-remote-process-monitor.en.softonic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Yet Another Process Monitor<\/a>, which gives you the same power, but a little extra information. Finally, consider a process pauser like <a href=\"http:\/\/free-process-freezer.en.softonic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Free Process Freezer<\/a>, a small app that will &#8216;freeze&#8217; a michevious program so that you can save the rest of your work before taking any executive decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I spent a over 30 minutes trying to kill an unholy mangle of Spotify, VMWare and an Excel document &#8211; it was a geek&#8217;s nightmare! When I realized that not one, but three programs had frozen, I tried to end the tasks in Task Manager. When I realized that that wasn&#8217;t working, I tracked &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/how-to-kill-frozen-processes\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How to: Kill frozen processes&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[2441],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-10762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2022"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335090,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762\/revisions\/335090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10762"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=10762"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=10762"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=10762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}