News How to Force Quit Windows

Aaron Priest

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And if it's merely Explorer.exe that has hung or crashed and you've lost your taskbar and desktop, then likely none of this will work. Or if you are using remote desktop into a computer, then ALT+CTRL+DEL brings up your local computer, but not the remote one. However, CTRL+SHIFT+ESC has worked since Windows 3.x and will bring up the task manager even if Explorer.exe has crashed, and from there you can either end task or restart it or start a new task (such as a shutdown command as a last resort). I use this often when troubleshooting stuck computers for clients.
 
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qwertymac93

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And if it's merely Explorer.exe that has hung or crashed and you've lost your taskbar and desktop, then likely none of this will work. Or if you are using remote desktop into a computer, then ALT+CTRL+DEL brings up your local computer, but not the remote one. However, CTRL+SHIFT+ESC has worked since Windows 3.x and will bring up the task manager even if Explorer.exe has crashed, and from there you can either end task or restart it or start a new task (such as a shutdown command as a last resort). I use this often when troubleshooting stuck computers for clients.
BTW, for a remote computer, you'd use CTRL+ALT+END.
 

Wimpers

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I've had cases where I just could not shut down or restart Windows when you machine isn't responding as it should be but you can still do stuff, unlike a hard lock or a crash.
You can issue the command in various ways but it just doesn't work and you need to power cycle your box to get out. Logs and the likes give you 0 information, it's just Windows that's like "I'm not gonna do that pal"
 
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dalek1234

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Shutting down windows doesn't actually fully shut it down like it used to in the past. Some core parts of Windows are kept loaded in memory (sucking up battery) so that the next time you start Windows, it takes less time to start because some components have been kept running. So if the issue that made your Windows stuck, is caused by one of those components that haven't been actually shut down, then your "problem" might still be running. To shut down Windows completely, you need to do a Restart. Or, there is a way to configure Windows to shut down completely when "shutdown" is selected, it's called "Turn on fast start-up ", it needs to be disabled.