Add Kill All Not Responding Tasks Context Menu in Windows 10  

EddieB1106 said:

That worked just fine, thanks

BlackVen0m said:

Is there any risks of killing non res tasks? Why is it not responding? Every time i start windows even if i wait 1 hour i get 1 non res task killed when i use it. It has different pid everytime, i wish to know what task it is.

Hello,

There's no risks to killing unresponsive tasks. It will only kill them to stop them from causing freezing or sluggish system behavior.

When this happens, you can check in Task Manager to see which processes are running, and look for one that may be using a high amount of resources that may be it.

Since this happens at startup, you might check your startup apps list to see if one of those may be responsible.

Add, Delete, Enable, or Disable Startup Items in Windows 10

I think I've come up with a way to modify this to list the unresponsive tasks before deleting them, but I need an unresponsive task to test it with. Any suggestions?

SpacemanSam said:

I think I've come up with a way to modify this to list the unresponsive tasks before4 deleting them, but I need an unresponsive task to test it with. Any suggestions?

Hello mate,

The command prompt from the context menu as is should list any not responding tasks that were killed.

I'm not aware of a way to test a not responding task on demand though, but found this below that may help.

c# - How do I make a console application appear "Not Responding"? - Stack Overflow

I tried creating an infinite loop in cmd, powershell and vbscript, but none of them show up as "not responding". The link you gave suggested using Winforms, but that requires setting up Visual Studio first. I was hoping for something simpler. Besides, the article you suggested (and others I researched) implied that even that might not work.

So, here's what I came up with to list unresponsive tasks before killing them. Replace the last line of the .reg file with:

Code:

@="CMD.exe /C (tasklist /fi \"status eq Not Responding\" | find /v \"No tasks\" && taskkill.exe /f /fi \"status eq Not Responding\" || echo No not-responding tasks found.) & ECHO; & <NUL: set /p junk=Press any key to close this window. & PAUSE >NUL:"

How it works: Tasklist is called to list all unresponsive tasks. This list is piped to find which searches for any lines NOT containing "No tasks". If any are found, taskkill is called to kill them, else a failure message is displayed.
In either case, <NUL: set /p prints the exit message without advancing to a new line and PAUSE >NUL: accepts a keystroke without prompting "Press any key to continue".

I've tested this on 2 computers running Windows 10 Pro and it printed "No not-responding tasks found." On another computer it listed the non-responding tasks by name before deleting them.

Update: this enabled BlackVen0m to find out what the non-responsive task is that he keeps seeing on startup.

Shawn, could you please update your downloadable .reg file to include this improvement?

rebelyell said:

Thanks for the reg file. This will come in handy and you made it simple. thanks