How to End Multiple Processes in Task Manager
The default task manager in Windows, unfortunately, doesn’t let you select multiple processes. But there are a couple options when it comes to ending multiple processes with task manager. You can install a program or do it from the command prompt. I will show you both.
Option 1 – End Multiple Processes With Program
The very first way to easily end multiple processes in task manager is to download the free
program. Be very careful with other applications that claim to do this. Many of them are a couple years old, require Java, and have adware in them. Also, a lot of older ones I tried also didn’t scale correctly on my high-resolution laptop.
Simply install Process Hacker and run it. You can then easily sort the applications by name, and select all of them, in this case mspaint.exe, and click “Terminate.” This will close all of them down in an instant, without prompting you to save.
Terminate multiple processes with Process Hacker
Option 2 – End Multiple Processes From Command Prompt
Your other option, and the way I prefer is to do it from the command prompt. I prefer this method because I like to keep my computer clean, no matter how safe the program is. If I can do it just as easy without an application, I will do it that way.
Step 1
Open up command prompt on your computer by pressing the start button, typing “CMD,” and pressing enter.
Step 2
Type in the following command and press enter. Obviously, you will need to use the actual process name. In my example, it is mspaint.exe. But this will work with any application.
taskkill /F /IM mspaint.exe
This will immediately end all processes with that name, as seen below. You can also stack the commands if you have multiple applications you want to close.
SUCCESS: The process “mspaint.exe” with PID has been terminated.
You can also go one step further and create a shortcut to run this automatically. To do this, right-click on your desktop, go to “New,” and click on “Shortcut.”
New shortcut in Windows
Type in the following command from above and click “Next.”
Create shortcut to kill process
Then name your shortcut and click “Finish.”
Name shortcut
You will then have a shortcut on your desktop in which you can double click at any time and it will run the command to terminate the processes. You can also pin this to your taskbar or start menu if you want.
Script to end multiple processes in task manager