How to Force Quit a Program on Windows

A program has stopped responding, its window is greyed out, and clicking the close button does nothing. Windows can end it from the outside without restarting the PC.

Try closing it with the keyboard

Click the frozen window so it is in front, then press Alt + F4. If the program is only slow rather than stuck, this gives it a chance to close normally and save its state. Wait a few seconds before moving on.

Open Task Manager

Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc. Task Manager opens directly, with no menu in between. If the shortcut does nothing, press Ctrl + Alt + Delete and choose Task Manager from the screen that appears.

On Windows 11, Task Manager opens to the Processes page with a sidebar on the left. On Windows 10 the same page is a tab along the top; if you see only a short list of names, click More details at the bottom.

Select the program

Find the program in the Processes list. Frozen programs usually show Not responding next to their name. Click it once to select it.

End the task

Click End task at the top right of the window (on Windows 10 it is at the bottom right). The program closes within a few seconds. Any unsaved work in it is lost, so use this only after Alt + F4 has failed.

If the program still will not close. Open Command Prompt, then run the command below, replacing the name with the program's executable name as shown on Task Manager's Details page:

taskkill /IM program.exe /F

The /F flag forces the process to end. If the process belongs to another user or a system service, open Command Prompt as administrator first.