Kill All Not Responding Tasks in Windows 10

In Windows 10, you can kill all not responding tasks at once. There is a special command which will allow you to do this. In this article, we will see how it can be done. Also, we'll create a shortcut to close hung tasks quickly.
In Windows 10 and in previous Windows versions, there is a taskkill console command which allows you to terminate a process or a group of processes. It supports a number of command line arguments which can be used to end some application.

For example, you can kill the explorer.exe process in order to restart it with the following command:

taskkill.exe /im explorer.exe /f

The /IM switch specifies the image name of the process to be terminated. It also supports wildcard '*' to specify all tasks and a part of the image name.
The switch /F will forcefully terminate the process(es).

The example above gives you an idea on how the taskkill.exe tool can be used. Now, let's see how to kill all not responding tasks.

To kill all not responding tasks in Windows 10, use the following syntax for taskkill.exe:

taskkill.exe /F /FI "status eq NOT RESPONDING"

A new switch, /FI, applies a special filter to select a set of tasks. It also supports wildcard "*", for example: imagename eq acme*.
The status filter in the example above tells the taskill command to find all not responding tasks. The /F switch specifies that all tasks which are hung should be terminated.

The supported filters are as follows:

Filter Name	Valid Operators	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 save your time, you can create a shortcut to terminate tasks quickly.

Create a shortcut to kill all not responding tasks in Windows 10

Right-click the empty space on your Desktop and select New - Shortcut.
In the shortcut's target, specify the following command:

taskkill.exe /F /FI "status eq NOT RESPONDING"

See the screenshot:

Name the shortcut as you wish and set the desired icon.

Now you can right-click it and pin it to the taskbar for faster access.

You can also assign a global keyboard hotkey to the file shortcut you created, so you will be able to close all not responding tasks by pressing that keyboard shortcut. Refer to the following article for step-by-step instructions:

Assign global hotkeys to launch any app in Windows 10

Alternatively, you can integrate the ability to kill not responding tasks with the context menu of the Desktop. Here is how.

Add Kill All Not Responding Tasks Context Menu in Windows 10

To add kill all not responding tasks context menu in Windows 10, you need to apply the following Registry tweak:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\KillNotResponding]
"icon"="taskmgr.exe,-30651"
"MUIverb"="Kill not responding tasks"
"Position"="Top"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\DesktopBackground\Shell\KillNotResponding\command]
@="cmd.exe /K taskkill.exe /F /FI \"status eq NOT RESPONDING\""

Paste the text above inside Notepad.

Then press Ctrl + S or execute the File - Save item from the File menu. This will open the Save dialog. There, type or copy-paste the name "Kill.reg" including quotes.

Double quotes are important to ensure that the file will get the "*.reg" extension and not *.reg.txt. You can save the file to any desired location, for example, you can put it in your Desktop folder.

Double click the file you created, confirm the import operation and you are done!

To save your time, I made ready-to-use Registry files. You can download them here:

Download Registry Files

The undo tweak is included.

You can save your time and use Winaero Tweaker instead. It comes with the following feature:

You can download it here: Download Winaero Tweaker.