
Now you can force-close a program by double-clicking this shortcut at any time. Call it anything you like, then press Finish. The shortcut creation box will then ask you to name your new shortcut. You want it to only kill processes with a status equal to Not Responding.



Right-click an empty space on your desktop and choose New > Shortcut. Here's how to create a shortcut that will close frozen processes: Instead, you can force-close app windows much easier with a shortcut that automatically closes any frozen apps. However, it's clumsy to open the command line window every time a program stops responding, and typing the command every time you want to kill an app isn't efficient. Typically, you would enter this command at the Command Prompt to kill a specific process.

To force close a program without the Task Manager, you can use the taskkill command. How to Force Close Apps Using a Desktop Shortcut If you'd like to kill apps in Windows even faster, we'll show you the best ways to force-close without opening the Task Manager. However, this isn't always the most efficient option. Your first move to force-close frozen programs might be to open the Task Manager, which is fine. Everyone has clicked on something in an app, only to have the window gloss over and show the dreaded Not Responding text. It's frustrating when Windows programs freeze up.
