Unkillable Processes (End Process doesn't work in Task Manager]

[Hank Scorpio]

Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2, Build 2600

This question has been asked before, but no-one seems to have had an
answer to it. I'm wondering whether (and hoping that) that has
changed.

I've noticed an increasing tendency for processes to be "unkillable".
Under an Admin login, you:
- Go to Task Manager,
- Find the process that has gone feral,
- Click on [End Process],
- Get the dialog that tells you "WARNING: Terminating a process can
cause undesired results",
- Click on the [Yes] button (MS please note; the correct caption for
that button should be [I'm running this machine, not you, just do what
I bloody tell you to do]) and...
- nothing happens. The process just keeps ticking away merrily,
completely ignoring you.

Naturally this interferes with any other instance of the process that
you may try to launch. For example, because you can't kill a zombie
WinWord.exe process, any attempt to reply to an Outlook message and
Outlook will hang as well since it tries to open a session of Word as
the message editor. Have enough applications go south on you (and the
gods know Office 2003 is really, REALLY good at going south on you),
and you end up with a system so unusable that a reboot is the only
remaining option.

(Word 2003 is exceptional at doing this if you forget about the woeful
piece of design which causes it to lock up if you copy something from
a web site and try to paste it into Word. Apparently this is a "really
awesome" piece of Web integration (everything needs to be Web
integrated, doncha know) where instead of just copying the data to and
from the clipboard, Internet Explorer and Word apparently decide that
the latter should try to get to the web site itself and pull down a
bunch of data, thus hanging itself. You can't kill the hung
WinWord.exe process, so you get the results described above. Second
memo to MS: This is what I pay the Clipboard for. It's not Word's job
to grab metadata from a Web site. It's Word's job to just paste the
clipboard data into the document, FROM the clipboard. And it would be
really nice if I could view the pasted pictures without having to turn
my graphics acceleration All-The-Way-Down half the time, but I
digress.)

Until tonight it's only been a problem with Office apps, but tonight
Acrobat Reader got in on the act. I found multiple processes (none
with a visible interface) and was able to kill all but one. That one
prevented me from launching Acrobat again.This is REALLY getting
annoying.

Does anyone have an idea of why this is happening?

 

[Rock]

Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2, Build 2600

This question has been asked before, but no-one seems to have had an
answer to it. I'm wondering whether (and hoping that) that has
changed.

I've noticed an increasing tendency for processes to be "unkillable".
Under an Admin login, you:
- Go to Task Manager,
- Find the process that has gone feral,
- Click on [End Process],
- Get the dialog that tells you "WARNING: Terminating a process can
cause undesired results",
- Click on the [Yes] button (MS please note; the correct caption for
that button should be [I'm running this machine, not you, just do what
I bloody tell you to do]) and...
- nothing happens. The process just keeps ticking away merrily,
completely ignoring you.

<snip>

Try process explorer from sysinternals.

 

[Hank Scorpio]

Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2, Build 2600

This question has been asked before, but no-one seems to have had an
answer to it. I'm wondering whether (and hoping that) that has
changed.

I've noticed an increasing tendency for processes to be "unkillable".
Under an Admin login, you:
- Go to Task Manager,
- Find the process that has gone feral,
- Click on [End Process],
- Get the dialog that tells you "WARNING: Terminating a process can
cause undesired results",
- Click on the [Yes] button (MS please note; the correct caption for
that button should be [I'm running this machine, not you, just do what
I bloody tell you to do]) and...
- nothing happens. The process just keeps ticking away merrily,
completely ignoring you.

<snip>

Try process explorer from sysinternals.

I used to use that program back in my Win98 days, but had forgotten
about it. Thanks for reminding me; it's a useful tool to have but not,
alas, for this. The previous postings that I've seen on this subject
have tried to use that application as well, but without success. As,
indeed, was MY attempt this morning. Winword.exe, PID 3988; "Kill
Process", says I, "Are you sure?" asks Process Monitor, "Yes", says
I... and nothing happens.

I think it's safe to assume that somewhere amongst the endless streams
of "Gee, we overlooked something and now someone can take control of
your computer" patches, MS has chronically [deleted] something up
within XP.

 

[MoiMeme]

Have you tried reinstall or repair of defaulted apps ? Done a virus scan ?
Otherwise try unlocker : it will allow to kill a task by finding who is
locking it. Perhaps that will work

Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2, Build 2600

This question has been asked before, but no-one seems to have had an
answer to it. I'm wondering whether (and hoping that) that has
changed.

I've noticed an increasing tendency for processes to be "unkillable".
Under an Admin login, you:
- Go to Task Manager,
- Find the process that has gone feral,
- Click on [End Process],
- Get the dialog that tells you "WARNING: Terminating a process can
cause undesired results",
- Click on the [Yes] button (MS please note; the correct caption for
that button should be [I'm running this machine, not you, just do what
I bloody tell you to do]) and...
- nothing happens. The process just keeps ticking away merrily,
completely ignoring you.

<snip>

Try process explorer from sysinternals.

I used to use that program back in my Win98 days, but had forgotten
about it. Thanks for reminding me; it's a useful tool to have but not,
alas, for this. The previous postings that I've seen on this subject
have tried to use that application as well, but without success. As,
indeed, was MY attempt this morning. Winword.exe, PID 3988; "Kill
Process", says I, "Are you sure?" asks Process Monitor, "Yes", says
I... and nothing happens.

I think it's safe to assume that somewhere amongst the endless streams
of "Gee, we overlooked something and now someone can take control of
your computer" patches, MS has chronically [deleted] something up
within XP.

 

[Hank Scorpio]

Have you tried reinstall or repair of defaulted apps ? Done a virus scan ?
Otherwise try unlocker : it will allow to kill a task by finding who is
locking it. Perhaps that will work

Thanks for the reply, but I'm afraid you've missed my point. There's
nothing wrong with the applications... err, OK, there IS something
wrong with the applications in terms of pure, unrefined brain-dead
design issues, but there's nothing wrong with the INSTALLATION of
them. The problem is that Windows is just refusing to kill the
applications when they lock, which cripples my ability to start a new
session of them without a reboot.

You'll recall that the problem primarily occurs when attempting to
paste from Web sites into Word, though in truth it'll impact all MS
Office applications. If you scan through the Word newsgroups you'll
see many mentions of this problem, and it's related to the fact that
when you copy data from Internet Explorer and paste it into Word, Word
*apparently* goes to get the data from the Web site rather than from
the clipboard. The only thing is, I don't WANT Word accessing the
Internet. I certainly don't want that as Word's default behaviour, and
more particularly I don't want it as behaviour that I can't disable.
(Preferably with three perfectly grouped 9mm slugs to the relevant
Option setting's temple.)

This sort of stupidity is why MS products are earning a reputation,
whether deserved or not, of spreading viruses more effectively than
anything short of tongue kissing an Ebola carrier.

To compound the problem, whatever genius came up with this brilliant
idea obviously wasn't QUITE clever enough to build in a "time out"
feature. It's the stupidest piece of design since Word's
implementation of section breaks, or the 924,307 built in styles that
you can't (effectively) delete. And that's saying something. With Word
there seems to be a concerted effort to take what is in many respects
an extremely good product, and screw it up as many ways as humanly
possible.

I had half an inkling that the problem was that Word was getting hung
up on the Firewall. So when the problem last occurred I looked at
Process Monitor and found the Word process tied in with another
process that appeared to originate from Norton Internet Security. My
guess, and it only is a guess, is that Windows won't let the Word
process die because the related Norton process is alive. And if you
kill the Norton process, it triggers a shutdown of the whole computer.
(Understandable, since I'm guessing that that could be interpreted as
an attack.)

The situation annoys the bewhatsists out of me because I don't give my
computer suggestions, I give it COMMANDS. When I say End Process, I
expect Windows to END it. Now. If there are related processes around,
it's Windows' job to deal with that. But its most important job is to
do what I tell it, the instant I tell it to.

However, I did find a way around this, which involves preventing the
program hang in the first place. The problem occurs when you copy from
Internet Explorer. I'm guessing that I.E. has some kind of "secret
handshake" which tells Word to implement the insane "now go get it
from the Web" operation. Firefox, on the other hand, does what I
expect of it. It puts the data onto the clipboard, from which Word
retrieves it. I have therefore dumped I.E. as my default browser, and
set it to Firefox. And believe me, this is long, LONG overdue. IE
feels bloated, out of date and slow. Firefox feels light on its feet,
does what I tell it to instead of whatever the hell it wants to, and
tabbed browsing? Inspired, simply inspired. Once you've had it,
there's just no going back. In addition to which Firefox doesn't have
to have 15 patches applied per week to prevent "someone taking control
of your computer". Wish I'd made the move months ago.

 

[Guest]

I just wanted you to know that you are not crazy. The only thing that is
crazy (besides that the problem exists in the first place) is that hardly
anyone is even discussing the problem. (And no one is suggesting a solution).
That is how I found your post. It is really the only mention I have found of
the exact problem I have been having for months. In my case it extends to
Excel, and also Adobe applications (especially Golive and Indesign CS2).

When task manager didn't work I tried Process Explorer, have tried task
kill, and other command line kill process applications, and nothing will shut
those processes down.

I usually use a 2-step work around of pasting web text into a txt file and
later into a word file for re-formatiing, but if I forget and paste directly
into Word, I have to restart. (Which also does not go as it should, probably
because XP thinks there are all these processes doing things...)

 

[Guest]

You know I'm having the same problem too. I just started recently maybe end
of January or so. I used norton ghost to restore a image from November and
from August but both come up with the same problem as before. I hope someone
can give a solution that acutally works