Terminate a Program Using Task Manager in Windows 8

Sometimes a program just does not respond no matter how long you wait and makes the whole system sluggish. This is when you need to kill or terminate that program. In Windows 8, you can do it easily using the Task Manager utility. Using the Task Manager utility, we can terminate all kinds of processes, apps, services and more. You can follow these instructions if you want to terminate a program in Windows 8 :

  1. First of all you need to start the Task Manager. There are many ways to start the Task Manager in Windows 8. The easiest way is to press the key combination Win + X and select Task Manager from the menu that appears. If you are using the Windows desktop, then you can right-click anywhere on the taskbar and select Task Manager from the context-menu. You can also use the hotkey Ctrl + Shift + Esc to launch the Task Manager.

    Terminate a Program Using Task Manager in Windows 8

  2. In the Task Manager window, you would be shown a simple list of all the currently running programs. The simple form of Task Manager does not show any services or processes, but the programs running with visible windows only. If you see the program that you want to terminate, then select it from the list and click/tap on the End Task button.

    Terminate a Program Using Task Manager in Windows 8

  3. It may be possible that you do not see the target program in the simple Task Manager window. In that case, you have to click on the More details in the lower-left corner, which would open a detailed form of the Task Manager. Here you can see Windows apps, processes, applications and services under various tabs. Most of the running processes are listed under the Details tab. Select your target program and click/tap on the End Task button to kill it.

    Terminate a Program Using Task Manager in Windows 8

  4. Be careful not to try terminating any processes running under the user name of SYSTEM, trying to terminate them may cause Windows to behave unexpectedly. After you have terminated the program you wanted to stop, you can close the Task Manager window.