shortcuts and tricks to force close a unresponsive application

Well . . ! It’s really annoying when any application suddenly freezes and total computer hangs. There are a few shortcuts and tricks to force close a unresponsive application. There are ways in Linux and Windows for this.

In Ubuntu (Linux):

• Conventional method: Open System Monitor >> Click on ‘Processes’ tab >> right click on the selected application >> Kill process.

• When the system monitor is unable to open, then ?
• Click Alt + F2 >> Type xkill >> the Mouse cursor changes to X >> Just click on the unresponsive application.

• Shortcut: Now, instead of such long process, you can just assign certain key or group of keys on the keyboard to draw out the xkill’s ‘X’cursor and force close the application.

• Open Keyboard settings in System settings >> click on the ‘+’ option.

• Fill in the Name: as you wish; Command: ‘xkill’ >> Click Apply.

• Click on “Disabled” option >> Select the key or combination of keys of your choice >> Done.

• I chose Ctrl + Alt + k. You can choose any of your choice. Once you click the combination of these keys, the xkill begins and you can kill any frozen application.

In Windows:

• Conventional method: Go to Task Manager >> Right click on the selected application >> End Task.

• Shortcut:
• Open a notepad file and type or paste the following:

taskkill /f /fi "status eq not responding"

• Save the file with ‘.bat’ extension on your desktop.(Example: Killer.bat)

• When any of your application stops responding just click the “show desktop button” on the bottom right corner or click windows + M to minimize all windows.
• Open the killer.bat file; Voila! your frozen application is automatically killed or restarted. You can change the icon if you want.
• This can be applied in case of ‘Not responding trackpad’ in laptops which is a common problem.
• Shortest-cut:
• You’ll have to make a few changes to the Registry Editor, which if done wrong may be fatal for your system functions.
• So, You can just add a new key to the Registry Editor of windows with this normal ready-made script

• Install the Add Kill Not Responding Tasks in Desktop Context Menu.reg file from ‘For Windows 7’ file.
• Run the script >> Accept all the prompts.

• Now, you can get the shortcut to kill the unresponsive application, in the right-click menu.

• To do it manually, visit this ste.
• So, that makes life easy when stuck in trouble.

Normal Browsing in File Explorer: For searching a file kept inside many folders, we use a lot of mouse clicks. Don’t we ? Well, mouse really makes a person slow. The keyboard is quite fast enough. How ?

After entering My Computer or This PC, you can just direct through keyboard.

• Windows + E (or This PC) >> Click the first letter of your drive >> Enter >> First letter of your desired folder >> Enter. Fast isn’t it ?

Option Key: This is one of the most useful keys instead of mouse.

• Click on the options button >> Click the underlined letter for each option to use it (almost all the necessary tools have the underlined letters).

• For Cut = ‘t’, for Rename = ‘m’ etc.

Auto-Fill in Terminal: In linux, while working in terminal, you don’t have to enter the complete name of the file or application; instead use the button ‘Tab’ which auto fills the file name.

• For Example: If you’re about to use the following command in your terminal

gfortran navier-stokes.f90 

• Now, just after typing ‘nav’ use the Tab button, the terminal will auto-fill the file name with extension if there aren’t any other files with the same name.
• This saves a lot of time while working in the terminal.

Virtual Printer: If you are taking any one time print from any website, you better use virtual printers like ‘doPDF’ in windows. So, you can get a pdf file in your computer and you can make multiple copies out of it.

In chrome, there’s a “Save as PDF” option, but the virtual printer works in any browser or software print.

PS: I’ll add more in future