How to Close a Program that is "Not Responding" in Windows

When a Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7 program locks up and says "Not Responding" it can be quite annonying having it to wait for the program to snap out its non-responding state.  Sometimes you don't want to wait a few minutes to have the program come back to life and in these instances you need a quick solution to close down the program and get on with things.  Here's the quickest way to get "Not Responding" programs to shut down quickly:

1. Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC on the keyboard to bring up the Windows Task Manager.
2. Click on the 'Applications' tab.
3. Under the 'Task' column, click on the program that is "Not Responding" and you would like to shut down.  (The 'Status' column should show "Not Responding" next to the program).
4. Click the "End Task" button.
5. An "End Program" box will pop-up which says "This program is not responding.  If you choose to end the program immediately, you will lose any unsaved data. To end the program now, click End Now."
6. Save any data in any programs that are currently open and running.
7. When ready, click "End Now" button.
8. This will shut down the "Not Responding" program.

Couple things to keep in mind, sometimes when you click the "End Now" button, it will in turn shut down every application you have open and running, so be sure to save any data you don't want to lose before clicking "End Now".

Also, if you're getting "Not Responding" problems on you computer quite frequently, it probably means you either have a very slow computer or more likely you have an anti-virus/internet security program that is causing problems.  For the longest time (10+ yrs), I used Norton Antivirus or Internet Security on my computers and put it on my family members computers as well.  After installing Norton Internet Security 2009 on my computer and running it for a while I started experiencing "Not Responding" problems consistently, which would literally freeze my computer for up to 15 minutes or more.  I finally decided I had enough and decided to uninstall Norton, and try using Microsoft Security Essentials instead as my anti-virus program.

Miraculously, ever since installing Microsoft Security Essentials back in September, 2009, all those computer lock ups that I was having everyday with Norton on my computer have practically gone away completely, and my computer is still bug free.  I honestly will never go back to buying Norton software again.  I've since unistalled Norton Internet Security on at least 5 computers and installed Microsoft Security Essentials, and to my amazement every computer has had a huge performance boost.  So the moral of this story is that, if you're getting "Not Responding" issues and you're running Norton Internet Security, I'd highly recommend you think about unistalling Norton and installing Microsoft Security Essentials (it's free and it works!).