How to automatically terminate hung program in Windows 7 / Vista / XP

How to automatically terminate hung program in Windows 7 / Vista / XP Many a times, programs like Office, Winamp and others, in Windows , get hung / Not Responding and clicking on close button just doesn’t work. Even the task manager “End program” feature fails or takes too much of time. Here is a small trick which you can use to Auto Kill the programs which it gets hung or goes into status of “Not Responding”. Steps to set auto kill not responding programs

  • Backup your registry first.
  • Go to Run and enter “Regedit“.

  • Browse to 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

reg

Windows 7  / Windows Vista

  • In Windows 7 we will need to add the following values :

  • WaitToKillAppTimeout=2000

  • AutoEndTasks=1

  • HungAppTimeout=1000

  • LowLevelHooksTimeout =1000

To add a value follow the steps below :

  • Right click on the left panel as seen in the image
  • Select New > String value.
  • String name should be one of the above.
  • Now double click and add the value and click ok. Repeat this for all.

  Windows XP

  • Here you will find a string called as “Auto End Task“, set its value to “1” by double clicking it. This means any hung program will be killed instantaneously.
  • Now suppose if you want to give some time, as some programs come back to normal in few minutes, Find a key called as “WaitToKillAppTimeout“, change the value to the value you want. You have to enter value in milliseconds though.

See the image for a clear view of what you are going to do. If anything goes wrong, use your backed up registry to get back to normal.!!!