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It's really great at ending the processes that are running fine, but when one
hangs, oh no, you're doomed. Reboot.
It's not even the TASK MANAGER. VISTA simply does not have the capability
to manage processes. Even 3rd party programs like Process Explorer and
Process KO can't do it.
My suggestion to MS would be, if you're going to mane an OPERATING SYSTEM,
spend less time on the USELESS AERO GLASS SKIN and more time on actual
FUNCTIONALITY.
Your TASK MANAGER should be able to MANAGE TASKS.
/end
Which programs will not close?
it takes a while, but if you are patient, it does close them. At least I
haven't found one yet that won't. Java vm is the biggest culprit for me -
sometimes printing international mailing labels it either crashes Firefox or
just hangs til I end
process on it.
And the explorer should be able to manage files
and the search tool should be able to find them
and the....
Wrong!
The Search tool should "Search" files. It does. It won't find, however. That
would be a "Find" tool. Maybe in Windows 7 :P
Honestly, I have Vista here and after getting acustomned to it, I very much
like it. It has a few quirks, but it'S OK.
My only problem is, that drag-drop of files between elevated and
non-elevated programs does not work.
Programs like FireFox, HL2.exe (counter-strike source), Winamp, etc when they
hang will not close even if i repeatedly push End Process > OK, End Process >
OK, End Process > OK, End Process > OK
Not ALL hanging processes can't be shut down--Sometimes they WILL shut down.
BUT
Sometimes they will NOT, and I have even pushed SHUT DOWN and turned my
monitor off... in the morning when i check, vista has STILL not been able to
kill the process or shut down... how sad.. The only way is to cold shut down
or cold reboot.
I am not talking about system processes--i know they are not to be closed.
I am talking about 3rd party programs that hang and the operating system has
no control over them to kill them.
It is not an uncommon problem. I don't know why you are asking like you
have never heard of this before??????? Apologies if I am mistaken. Google
"cannot end process" and you will see many results in both XP and Vista. I
had hoped Vista would have an improvement in this regard. it has not.
Hey guess what, I know what the problem is. Microsoft had another brilliant
idea (sarcasm--as usual) called "Clean service shutdown" .
Microsoft's SysInternals software engineer Mark Russinovich, describes this
at WinHEC 2007 (link at bottom of my post).
"One of Windows' historical problems concerns its system shutdown procedure.
In XP, once shutdown begins, the system starts a 20-second timer. After that
time is up, it signals the user whether she wants to terminate the
application herself, perhaps prematurely. For Windows Server, that same
20-second timer may be the lifeclock for an application, even one that's busy
spooling ever-larger blocks of data to the disk.
In WS2K8, that 20-second countdown has been replaced with a service that
will keep applications given the signal all the time they need to shut down,
as long as they continually signal back that they're indeed shutting down.
Russinovich said developers were skeptical at first about whether this new
procedure ceded too much power to applications; but in practice, they decided
the cleaner overall shutdowns were worth the trade-offs."
WOW WHAT A GREAT IDEA, LETS ASK PROGRAMS NICELY TO SHUT THEMSELVES DOWN!!!
No wonder the Vista Task Manager is completely useless and can't kill
anything. What a bunch of BONEHEADS. Your OS can't even dump a hanging
process.
These memory problems can De Ja Vu the windows nightmare experiences all over, right the way back to 9x.
However, this vista seems only a basic bloated foundation built hastily on market misconceptions, rather f* annoying adding the given fact that it now resembles allot like its predecessors from a more noble heritage.
Anyway, right or wrong, what I am really trying to say has been unjustifiably shortened in the last sentence.
...as if we don't waste enough time as it is Without worrying about microsh*ts antics...
We cannot let people go around spreading these lies about Vista and Microsoft. They just aren't true! Vista ISN'T OK!!!!
It is a complete waste of coding time. Worse, it is a waste of everybody's installation time.
You cannot kill the blasted processes! I am sitting looking at a process that has been these for 3 hours. If you think I'm waiting this time every time I want to kill a process you have got to be a comedian.
My shutdown can take forever. And I have to reboot to get over the browser issue (Vista, locks up ANY browser....just for http port). There is NO solution except to reboot
So, if you are working, and your browser packs up, you have to reboot and it still takes forever!
Serously, what Microsoft are doing here is nothing short of criminal. It is money for old rope. As the guy above says....Win9x all over again....and they don't get any ropier than that!
I can not believe this, I can not end my OWN process, it tells me access is denied. I am administator, I am the creator of that f**n process. How come something like this vista "thing" can be called an operating system while it is NOT even capable of control the OPERATIONS ! I hate this, I really really do, as a programmer, I have to waste my time, money and LIFE for this kind of BS, becouse it is so called mainstream ! Damn !
sadly, I can confirm that this travesty of a problem persists right into windows 7. If the process hangs, there is often NOTHING you can do to stop it other than rebooting, and frequently, that means holding down the power button because it won't initiate the shutdown proceedure with the hung program. to the absolute moron above (a few posts), to assume that it is a lack of knowledge that causes this problem... idiot. the taskkill command "succeeds" and does nothing. the task manager does nothing. you are stuck with an unresponsive program, and evidently even logging out and back in doesn't allow you to reload the program in question. it is no longer an "active" process, but you get an error when you attempt to reload it.
and the person that started this thread at least is not talking about system processes. it is 3rd party stuff like firefox (which is currently hung in my case).
I partly agree with both of you... One, you may not know how to use the OS
or buy or build a good PC to run Vista on..
Yes I have had hangs or hung processes,, but it is a small number of apps and usually older ones that work fine on XP machines.... but for some reason hang or function strangly on Vista... Remember moving from Win95 to 98 Or XP how many head aches did that cause you?
Sounds like you may have some corrupt file issues or compatability problems to have all browsers hang... I use no less than 4 of them every day... to test web sites.. Opera, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, and Safari to name a few.. I don't think i have ever had one of thos hang... but I don't do games on Vista... only my Best XP box for that...
Go MAC or Linux,
I'm just not geeky enough for that !
I agree with most of you. Vista is a shambolic operating system that cannot manage its own processes. With Unix and Linux there is the kill -9 command but vista will make you reboot (or more likely make you hold the power button down). The news that Windows 7 is no better is a blow as I was going to upgrade later this year. I have been playing with Ubuntu on an old IBM laptop (T42). It beats the pants of my core 2 duo with Vista for speed and performance. How can that be right?
I think the writing may well be on the wall for microsoft, if their operating system is so user hostile they are going to lose ground just like they did with Firefox. And with Google entering the OS market things are going to get really interesting.
I didn't see the earlier part of this thread, but ... well, Windows - or
at least, Win32 - has no Signals mechanism, so a kill -9 SIGKILL does
not and cannot exist, as such, on Windows. The Windows POSIX subsystem
supports both Signals and kill -9 (although, POSIX/Interix/SFU/SUA has
been shamefully neglected by MSFT; they didn't realise what they had).
However, if you have a Command Prompt open, (and which true geek
doesn't?) then you can kill a Win32 process with extreme prejudice from
the command line, by issuing a "taskkill /PID <nnn> /f /t", as
documented here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../bb491009.aspx
By running in the Console, this seems to bypass some of the Windows
message loop processing that can gum up other task managers like Process
Explorer or, uh, Task Manager. Mind you that's just my subjective
impression, I haven't stepped through it in the debugger.
Overall, Windows decided to prefer to allow processes to shut down
gracefully, rather than making it easy to kill them outright. Whereas
POSIX systems (Unix, Linux etc) let you easily kill a process, without
much "are you sure" graceful graciousness, aforethought. Is one better
than the other? How many lives have been lost, and how many sysadmins
have turned grey, as a result of one or the other design decision? Hard
to say .. I think there's no clear winner there.
Have used the taskkill command many times and the prompt confirmed that the process had been killed. However it hadn't. Because I ran the same taskkill command and got the same confirmation for a process which, if the previous entry had been correct, should not have existed. You say that many admins pull their hair out at either scenario. This is not the case. With POSIX you have a clear choice, use the command or don't use it. You have the same choice with windows but it doesn't matter a rats because the geniuses at Microsoft have decided that you shouldn't have this choice.
However I think the point is moot as even Microsoft have given up defending Vista. In fact they are pretty much ignoring it saying "Hey look! Windows 7" Pathetic. And if pressed on the matter they say it was the fastest selling OS ever at the time. That's because there were more computers sold than before and they had to have something on them. It was telling though when Dell restarted supplying machines with XP on them rather than Vista.
In the 60's the best selling anti-morning sickness drug taken by pregnant mothers was Thalidimide. The fact that it was the best selling doesn't mean that it was good. Vista will prove to be the Thalidimide of computer history. That and Millennium Edition of course. I do believe that many people refer to Vista as ME2.
Personally I think that Microsoft have moved themselves into the elite group that includes bankers and the cigarette industry. They wouldn't say sorry either. Good job microsoft. You did more for Linux in the two years of Vista than Linux had done for itself in 10 years. Well done indeed.
Here's a clue. On MY computer when I want a process to stop then it should bloody well stop you morons