What's nature of hung processes & what techniques or software get them off my system

I'm on hopefully my last couple of months on an old XP. From time to time I get what I think are "hung" programs. To wit, they show "Not responsive" in Task Manager, and I find that I cannot click them out with my mouse or kill them from Task Manager or Process Explorer. Sometimes with a browser like Chrome that has multiple .exes in Task Manager I can succeed in killing all but one .exe, but that last one hangs. Of course that means the browser is unusable without a reboot. But it's not inordinately the browser that hangs. Lots of different programs hang.

I want to know, what is actually going on when this happens? I've never heard it explained.

Are there techniques or programs that will kill a stubbornly hung process?

I tried killing hung programs with Process Hacker and ProcessKO with no luck so far. Do other people get Process Hacker to work? Anti-Freeze and a similar program by Tweaking.com utterly failed me.

Yea, I know I need more RAM and processing power and maybe other things as well, but right now I don't have time for an all-out hunt for a new computer.


Windows XP
Home Edition
Version 2002
32-bit
Service Pack 3

Dell DIMENSION DIM2400
Intel(R)
Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.66GHz
x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 9
2.05 GB of RAM
Graphics Card: Intel(R) 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV
Graphics Controller, 64 Mb
Hard Drive Size 114.4GB
Free Space 35.8GB
Motherboard: Dell Computer Corp., 0G1548
Antivirus : avast!

 

Re: What's nature of hung processes & what techniques or software get them off my sys

You can download this

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/ccleaner_standard.html

go to Tools - Startup - Disable all programmes , even you can go to
Start - Run cleanmgr - ok , also you can check your hdd by going to Start - right click to My Computer - Properties - Tools - you can choose only Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors - ok , even you can go to Start - Run prefetch - ok ( removing all files ) , go to Start - Run %temp% - ok ( removing all files ) your Ram is alright for Win Xp my friend :wave

 

Re: What's nature of hung processes & what techniques or software get them off my sys

A few questions if you please.

When these hangs occur, how many processes is Task Manager or Process Explorer listing? Which ever one you're using, make sure that "Show processes from all users" is check marked.

I'm showing 34 processes on my old Dell 4600i configured very similar to your 2400, hardware wise. At the moment though, I'm not using it so it's not running anything other than what is run at start-up. But when it is in use it rarely has more than 40 processes running at any given time.

Don't know where it is at the moment, but in one of your screen shots in another thread, you where showing "Commit Charges" at 93 percent. That is pretty high, at least compared to what mine is showing, Commit Charges are 7.54 percent.

Since you're using XP, before you use Ccleaner to manage start-up(s), you might want to read:
Dealing with Startup Processes - MajorGeeks Support Forums.
It is safe enough to use Ccleaner to look at what is starting up.

A simple and safe start-up manager is: Startup Control Panel Standalone Version - MajorGeeks.
Another good start-up manager is: Microsoft Autoruns - MajorGeeks, but it is complex, technical and can easily cause you much trouble if used improperly(also done quite easily).

 

Re: What's nature of hung processes & what techniques or software get them off my sys

here is a wiki of what a hung program is... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_%28computing%29