How-To Geek
How to Create a Shortcut That Nukes Every Running Windows App
Have you ever had dozens of application windows open and wanted to just close them all? There’s a bunch of freeware apps that will close them all for you, but you don’t need extra software—and here’s how to do it.
What we’ll do is use the taskkill command with a bunch of custom arguments that specify to kill everything other than Explorer—but you can really customize it to anything you’d like, and keep in mind you should really read this carefully before proceeding.
Create the Nuke Everything Command
The first thing you’ll want to do is open up a command prompt and then type taskkill /? so you can see the syntax. Loads of options!
We’ll be using a couple of operators to accomplish what we want, including these two:
- /F – force closes the applications (this is optional, keep in mind force closing will lose unsaved data)
- /FI – uses a filter, which is where the magic is
The filter command takes a set of arguments, which you can see in the help, but we’ll put them here as well:
Filters:
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
NOTE
----
1) Wildcard '*' for /IM switch is accepted only when a filter is applied.
2) Termination of remote processes will always be done forcefully (/F).
3) "WINDOWTITLE" and "STATUS" filters are not considered when a remote
machine is specified.
Now that we’ve seen the possible arguments for the filters, it’s time to put them together. For example, if you wanted to kill every app by your username, you’d use taskkill like this to check where your username is “eq” (equal) to geek.
taskkill /F /FI "USERNAME eq geek"
The only problem with this is that it would also kill explorer.exe and dwm.exe, so your whole screen would flash and the Start Menu would completely disappear—probably not what you want. Thankfully we can chain together multiple instances of the /FI argument to fix this problem, and we’ll use the IMAGENAME, which is the name of the executable, and the “ne” for “Not Equal” to the ones we don’t want to kill.
taskkill /F /FI "USERNAME eq geek" /FI "IMAGENAME ne explorer.exe" /FI "IMAGENAME ne dwm.exe"
You can customize this even further if you’d like, adding extra processes that you don’t want to close into the list. It’s really up to you—just keep in mind that if you accidentally kill Explorer.exe you can always use Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager, and restart the process from the File –> Run menu.
Note: if you don’t want to force kill the applications, you should remove the /F argument.
Create the Nuke Windows Shortcut
Once you’ve got the command figured out, it’s easy enough to create the shortcut—just right-click anywhere and choose New Shortcut. Once you’re there, drop the full command into the location box.
Give it an icon and put the shortcut somewhere, and you’re all done. Now you can kill everything in one shortcut, with no added software!
In case you’re wondering, you can find this icon in the Windows\System32\imageres.dll file.
Note: use of this shortcut should be done at your own risk, and if your computer explodes don’t blame us. We warned you.
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- By The Geek on 10/21/10
Comments (24)
-
BenHi, thanks so much for this post, it is the best possible shortcut for my work!
I have a question though; does anyone know how I can add “log off user” when I run the above shortcut??
I typically have to shut down all programs then click log off, it would be nice if there was a little script I could add to force a log off.
thanks
-
edsand
shutdown /l will do a logofff.
-
Suljo
Conan easy fix for you
taskkill “processname” /f /t
just open notepad and type
taskkill “processname” /f /t
and repeat it as many times u want
lets say i want to quit skype and steam and notepad and mspaint i will type:taskkill notepad.exe /f /t
taskkill mspaint.exe /f /t
taskkill skype.exe /f /t
taskkill steam.exe /f /tand save it as quit.bat (.bat must exist!)
and if i ned to quit it i wolud just run this program
cheers
DjHackerr
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Nice write up! I really desktop background …where can I get i?
How can I chain commands in a similar way? For example, if an application freezes, I want to have a shortcut to force kill that application and then start it again. Can it be done in one shortcut?
Awesome to be used as a prank ;)
It’s almost as easy to just open the task manager, highlight all the apps, and hit End Task.
@Roland
Create a new Text Document (.txt file) and change the extension to .bat
Open it in Notepad and paste:
taskkill /im firefox.exe /f
start “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”
That would be an example with Firefox. You can change it to what ever you like.
Great shortcut!
I have a further simplification: Replace the hardcoded username geek above with the Windows environment variable %USERNAME%
The variable %USERNAME% is set automatically upon runtime and will hold your username. I verified this on my Windows XP system.
I just use the Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and end the process. I don’t really want to kill everything.
how can i get this to work in XP? I get an error saying “The file taskkill cannot be found”
thanks
I would make a batck file like this:
@echo off
cls
title Task Killer
:start
echo Which task do you want to kill?
set /p kill=
if not %kill%==explorer.exe goto kill
if not %kill%==dwm.exe goto kill
echo You cannot kill explorer.exe or dwm.exe.
echo Kill another.
echo.
echo.
goto start
:kill
taskkill /F %kill%
echo %kill% is now killed. You can now press a key or close the window.
pause >nul
exit
i cannot test my script, as i currently only have access to aunix shell, but i am confident that it will work.
RE: marvinbek’s script;
It does SEEM to do what it is supposed to do, but;
when I type the process name, it states ( Transparent.exe is the process I want to kill):
“ERROR: Invalid Argument/Option – Transparent.exe
Type TASKKILL/? for usage
and then it states that Transparent.exe is now killed.
I think this script will work, but needs some adjustment, unless, of course; that is an XP thing. I will try this at home on Vista later.
Thanks for the post, though, marvinbek. Good Job!
I want to alter the code to EXIT only the Following programs\
Internet Explorer
Windows Media Player
Yahoo Instant Messenger
iTunes
I have the following code in the desjtop shortcut
HOWEVER,
it doesn’t seem to work, please advise
C:\Windows\System32\taskkill.exe /F /FI “USERNAME eq kudo” /F “IMAGENAME eq YahooMessenger.exe” /F “IMAGENAME eq wmplayer.exe” /F “IMAGENAME eq iexplore.exe” /F “IMAGENAME eq itunes.exe”
@Conan
You can only use /F once
I would appreciate anyone’s thoughts if this could be used to kill malware processes before running a virus/malware scan? I’m always looking for new tools for cleaning up PCs.
@marvinbek
it is better practice when using variable comparison to surround the variable with characters of some sort
instead of ‘if not %kill%==explorer.exe goto kill’
use if not ‘ “%kill%”==”explorer.exe” goto kill ‘
The reasoning behind this is, if the kill variable is blank or has a space in it, the batch file will throw an error.
@David,
I am running Win XP SP3 and I can run the program. I do not know if the command is part of something extra/optional in Windows, though.
for those who struggle to do this themselves theres a pre-made one!! http://skater-andy.deviantart.com/art/Nuke-Programs-For-Windows-183777052
Heres one for people who struggle to make it themselves http://skater-andy.deviantart.com/art/Nuke-Programs-For-Windows-183777052
‘taskkill’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
I am running windows xp sp3. Am I missing something? Excellent tool but I just can;t get it to run. Anyone have any suggestions?
Me too, I get the same error message in XP SP3, unable to find ‘taskkill’. So this didn’t work for me.
Try using tskill instead of taskkill