How to quickly stop a program after it stops responding in Windows XP and Vista

I know it has happened to you. After some time with smooth sailing on your computer, multi tasking between Internet explorer to do research, updating the document you are working on, checking your email, and doing other important things on your computer….. Then all of a sudden one of the programs you are working in locks up completely. You know the dreaded "Not Responding" message at the top of the program. Then you wait and wait, but still there is no respond. You give up, click the "X" to close the program, and then you get an "End Now" dialog box. But this too seems to make you wait indefinitely (I guess Microsoft's definition of end now really is "maybe sometime in the future"). If this sounds familiar (and I'm sure it is), there is a quick way to stop a non responsive program that will end it almost immediately after a few simple steps. Steps to really end a program NOW: 1. On the bottom right of your desktop near the clock, right click on any area 2. On the content sensitive menu that appears, left click "Task Manager" 3. From the Task Manager screen, right click on the program that is giving you trouble 4. On the menu that pops up, left click on "Go to Process" (This will bring you directly to the program's exe in the Processes tab) 5. Right click on the program process that is highlighted (don't worry if the name doesn't sound familiar, if Windows brought you here from clicking "Go to Process" then you are in the right place) and click "End Process" And that's it. The program will stop instantly 99% of the time. Now if this happens constantly with a particular software, you might want to reinstall it on your system. Also note, there is one instance where if you click on go to process (step 4 from above) it will take you to a process called Explorer.exe. This is the main Windows process and if you end it, you will lose the start bar. No worries, because it does come back after a brief period. But if it doesn't follow these additional steps: 1. While still in the Task manager screen left click on File at the top, left corner 2. Click on "New Task (Run..)" 3. Type in Explorer.exe and click run or ok. Task manager will restart and your start bar will be restored.