In Windows 10, you can kill all tasks that are no longer responding simultaneously. There is a special Command Prompt command for this job. In this article, we will see how you can do it and we will also create a related shortcut for easy access to the command.
In Windows 10 and earlier versions, there is a taskkill, which allows you to terminate a process or a group of processes. For example, you can kill the explorer.exe process with the following command:
taskkill.exe /im explorer.exe /f
The /im switch specifies the name of the process to be killed. It also supports the '*' wildcard so you can specify part of the process name.
The /f switch will forcefully kill the process(es).
The above example gives you an idea of how the taskkill.exe command can be used. Now, let’s see how to kill all processes that are not responding to their tasks.
To kill all non-responding processes in Windows 10, simply use the following syntax for taskkill.exe:
taskkill.exe /F /FI "status eq NOT RESPONDING"
With the new switch, /FI, you apply a special filter that allows you to select a range of tasks. It also supports the wildcard “*”, for example: imagename eq acme*.
The above filter tells the taskill command to find all NOT RESPONDING processes. The /F switch specifies that all tasks found should be terminated.
The supported filters are as follows:
| Filter Name | Parameter | Valid Value(s) |
| STATUS | eq, ne | RUNNING | NOT RESPONDING | UNKNOWN |
| IMAGENAME | eq, ne | Image name |
| PID | eq, ne, gt, lt, ge, le | PID value |
| SESSION | eq, ne, gt, lt, ge, le | Session number |
| CPUTIME | eq, ne, gt, lt, ge, le | CPU time in the format of hh:mm:ss. hh – hours, mm – minutes, ss – seconds |
| MEMUSAGE | eq, ne, gt, lt, ge, le | Memory usage in KB |
| USERNAME | eq, ne | User name in [domain\\]user format |
| MODULES | eq, ne | DLL name |
| SERVICES | eq, ne | Service name |
| WINDOWTITLE | eq, ne | Window title |
To make your time more efficient, you can create a shortcut to quickly terminate tasks.
Right-click on an empty space on your desktop and select New – Shortcut.
In the shortcut item, specify the following command:
taskkill.exe /F /FI "status eq NOT RESPONDING"
Press the “Next” button and then name your shortcut as you wish, for example “Kill the stuck tasks”, set an icon of your choice and it’s ready. You can pin the shortcut or you can also assign a keyboard shortcut.
