Sometimes, it happens that a program may stop responding and does not even react to to user’s intention to close it. The frozen application may also affect computer performance and it is necessary to have a way to force close it. One option is to do this from task manager, but today we will tell you how to do this from Windows command prompt, as it may happen that you can’t stop the program in task manager. It is a more reliable way to force close applications in some cases. Also we are going to show you how to close multiple programs in one click. This is extremely useful and time saving in case you need to close lots of programs and do not want to do that one by one every time, let’s say in the end of your working day.

First thing to do is to start Windows command prompt. Press combination of “Windows + R” keys, type in cmd.exe and hit enter. Command prompt window will then open and will be automatically granted with administrative rights.

Next thing is to identify the program that needs to be closed. Type in tasklist in command prompt and hit Enter. This will show you the list of all programs, currently running in your OS.

Once you identified your problem application, you need to execute taskkill command. If I take MS Outlook as example it will look like:  taskkill /f /im outlook.exe . Just copy and paste the line to the command prompt and substitute “outlook.exe” with the name of the application that you want to close. The name should be exactly the same as it appears in “tasklist” grid above.

You can also use the process ID instead of name (it is shorter and may appear to be more convenient) to terminate the application. The command in this case will look like taskkill /f /pid XXXX, where XXXXis the Process ID taken from “tasklist” grid (second column). Once you execute the command, the cmd window should return you the success message.

Another way to use this command is to create a list of programs that you need to close on regular basis, like at the end of your working day, and have Windows close them all with a single action.

Just create a *.bat file and enlist your programs there. You can read about how to create *.bat files in our previous article. When all the programs are listed, file should look like shown below.

Once you double click on your *.bat file, it will close all the programs. In case some documents or files need to be saved before closing, they will give you a warning, just like during regular program termination.