SIGTERM

When an application freezes, you have to either close the process or wait for it to finish what it's doing and recover. While Windows comes with a pretty solid task manager that enables you to view and manage all the processes, there are other alternatives that can help you force the termination of a process in case the traditional methods don't work. One of them is SIGTERM.

Designed as a console application, SIGTERM comes with different options, all having the same goal: to end the target process safely.

You can run it by launching a console window with administrative privileges and selecting the executable file from the archive, as no setup is needed. By doing so, you automatically trigger the help system, which shows you usage examples, alongside the syntax of each command and a detailed description of how it works.

There are two different ways for you to close a process. The first requires you to enter the process ID and, if a matching process is found, it will be closed by SIGTERM. The alternative is to enter the process name as a string, using quotation marks, and the result should be the same. If the target process refuses to close, then you can try to forcefully terminate it by using the "kill" command.

There are a few additional options you can use as arguments. The "timeout" command instructs SIGTERM to wait for a specific number of milliseconds before attempting to terminate the process, and the "single" command directs the application to refuse to close the processes when more than one with the same given name is found. Another command allows SIGTERM to list all the active processes, while the "stop" command tells it to cancel its actions at the first error.

SIGTERM is not a complicated application, and it definitely cannot match a full-featured task manager. Nevertheless, it enables you to forcefully terminate a process in case no other methods do the trick.