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I am having a problem where processes are hanging and absolutely refuse to die. I have tried using the task manager and pskill from the console (with admin rights) and while the program will state that it has killed the process it still remains and I cannot open a second process. This has happened with Opera and Truecrypt.

Operating system is Windows 7 Professional (64-bit). Rebooting the computer clears the hung process.

I also tried using a program called Ultimate Process Detail & Killer, which didn't help either.

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@Chris Have a look at the related links over here –  Sathya Feb 3 '11 at 17:17
Have you scanned for malware?, have you run a System File Checker?, have you run a chkdsk /f? –  Moab Feb 3 '11 at 18:52
@Moab Tried all that too. Highly annoying to have to reboot everytime this happens. I finally let Truecrypt sit, after about 20 minutes it finally closed on its own. –  Chris Feb 3 '11 at 19:58
Do you have the latest version of Truecrypt? I have had this happen with other applications, I do what you did after terminating the process, just wait, sometimes that is the best solution. –  Moab Feb 3 '11 at 20:14
@Moab: Yes, I have the latest version of Truecypt. I don't want to point at Truecrypt as the culprit as I've experienced it with Opera too. It's like the memory for said application goes into limbo for 20+ minutes before coming out. Opera never came out. –  Chris Feb 3 '11 at 21:15

3 Answers 3

up vote 6 down vote accepted
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what exactly is the ntsd command? any links to the uses, thanks. –  Moab Feb 3 '11 at 22:00
@Moab: ntsd is Windows NT Symbolic Debugger, part of Windows XP and later. (The q command means just "quit".) There's some information at MSDN. –  grawity Feb 3 '11 at 22:14
Thanks grawity, So that command tells the process to quit? what does -p and -c mean, thanks for your patience. –  Moab Feb 3 '11 at 22:30
@Moab: They're options: -p tells the program that the following argument is a numeric process ID to attach to; similarly, -c precedes a single command - without it, you would get ntsd's interactive mode. –  grawity Feb 3 '11 at 22:54
Is there any chance to see what does it wait for? Because Miranda and Skype both hang like this and I can't see what may be the core problem, that I need to solve :( –  Tomáš Fejfar May 9 '13 at 16:16

Use the following command:

Taskkill /IM **.exe /F
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Space Tornado Killer might do the trick, as I have it installed on my PC.

Space Tornado Killer is a free Windows utility that allows you to end/kill multiple running Windows processes at once, with one click of a button. Hold down Ctrl and click to select one, two, three or any number of processes. Then simply click Kill Selected or hit F4 to end all the selected processes at once.

This utility is designed to complement Task Manager, not replace it.

For further details & to download


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