How to Force Quit Program in Windows 11 & 10

Use your computer long enough and you will face a situation where a program or application is not responding and is completely frozen. When that happens, you will also see the “Not Responding” text on the program’s title bar. In those cases, you have to kill or force quit the program to fix it. Otherwise, you cannot use the program and it even might use unnecessarily excessive amounts of system resources.

The good thing is you have several built-in methods to quickly force quit programs and applications in both Windows 11 and Windows 10 with just a couple of clicks. In this quick and easy tutorial, I will show you three methods to kill a program in Windows. These include using the new End Task option, the Task Manager, and a command. Let’s get started.

Before You Begin

• Generally, you don’t need admin privileges to force quit a program. However, if a program is launched with elevated privileges, you need admin rights to force quit.
• Force quitting a program may cause data loss if there is any unsaved work in that program.
• Some methods, such as the Command Prompt method, require admin rights.

Force Quit Program Using Task Manager

1. Right-click on the taskbar.
2. Select the “Task Manager” option.
   
3. Go to the “Processes” tab in the Task Manager.
4. Here, find and select the process you want to end. If the process is in the Not Responding state, you will see the “(Not Responding)” text next to the process name.
5. After selecting the process, click on the “End Task” button.
   Note: On Windows 11, the End Task button will be at the top of the Task Manager window.
   
6. If you see a warning message, click the “OK” button.
7. With that, the selected program is forcefully closed.
8. Close the Task Manager.

That is all. As soon as you click the “End Task” button, Windows will kill the process. Keep in mind that it may take a couple of seconds. So, don’t worry if the application does not close immediately.

Use the “End Task” Taskbar Option (Windows 11)

Windows 11 users can enable the “End Task” taskbar option and quit any unresponsive program directly from the Taskbar. To force quit an application from the taskbar, simply right-click on the program icon on the taskbar and select the “End Task” option.

Here’s a more detailed tutorial on how to use the End Task option to quit unresponsive applications.

Command to Force Quit an Application in Windows

You can also force quit or kill any process or program directly from the command line. For that, you need to use the “TaskKill” command with the PID (Process ID) or process name of the program or app you want to force quit. While sounds complicated, it’s pretty easy.

1. Open the Start menu.
2. Search for “Command Prompt“.
3. Right-click on the “Command Prompt” and select the “Run as administrator” option.
4. Type “tasklist” in the command window and press Enter.
5. Note down the PID of the program you want to force quit.
   
6. Next, execute the below command while replacing “<process ID>” with the PID of the program or process you want to force quit.
   taskkill /f /pid <processID>
7. Close the command window.
8. With that, you’ve killed the target process and force quit the application.

Wrapping Up — Force Quitting Unresponsive Programs in Windows 11 and Windows 10

As you can see, when you have an unresponsive program, it is quite simple to force quit it. You can use either of the three methods to get the job done. That being said, if you are using Windows 11, make sure to enable the taskbar’s End Task option as it makes everything that much easier. Of course, you can also use the other two methods (Task Manager & Command Prompt) to kill an offending process. In fact, here are three more methods to close programs without opening the Task Manager.

If you have any questions or need help, comment below. I’ll be happy to help.