Saturday, September 30, 2006

Day 16 - QuickKill

Here's an app thats been requested by more then just a few.

The application will quickly kill all tasks not listed in a configuration file. This can be used for a variety of reasons: saving battery life on laptops, easy performance increase, "gaming mode", etc... Bottom line is, it'll get rid of everything you don't need very quickly.

Some may argue that you should use a program such as HijackThis to stop these things from starting in the first place. While that is the solution for things that you NEVER want running, this application is more specific to killing off the things you won't need right now. Things like sql server, virus scan, bluetooth, and various other background tasks that you won't need for your "gaming mode".

I've preconfigured the file with all of the critical processes that were on my machine, so it includes all of the obvious WinXP necessities.

It's a console application - no gui, just nice and clean. This was to make it batch scriptable with command line args, and nice and simple to use.

The application WILL ask for your confirmation before it kills the tasks. You're presented with a list of what will be killed, and asked to press 'Y'. For batch scripting, a "-q" parameter will supress this warning and just autokill. Run the program with a "-?" for the other option (exemption file override).


Digg!
  Download the app here
  Download the source here

May the source be with you

36 Comments:

At 2:12 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

if any one has problems running the program. download microsoft .NET framework 2.0

http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/netframework.html

 
At 2:52 AM, Blogger Legit Freebies Guy said...

Perfect for gaming! Thanks a lot!

 
At 3:20 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Doesn't work (crashes) in Vista RC1. FYI. Works excellent for XP. Cheers

 
At 4:19 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Awesome dude, fricken awesome! I asked about this recently and none of my efriends had any idea so thanks muchly! :)

 
At 7:35 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Handy. I'll give it a whirl.

 
At 9:35 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Very useful app, I plan to use it quite a bit.

One suggestion: Label all the processes by number, and then allow the user to exclude one (or more) of the processes the app would kill by default.

There was one process it kills that I want to keep running. I would edit the source...but, you know, I don't know how to program.

Thanks, and keep up the good work.

 
At 9:46 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

just edit the jedi file with notepad to exclude other programs

 
At 9:55 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There is a program like this already in XP, it's called taskkill.exe and tasklist.exe, found in the /system32 folder...

 
At 10:27 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good work.

Consider posting source code in a html link rather than a zip file download.

 
At 10:37 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, Folks, in XP, just use tasklist.exe.

Or, better yet, switch to Linux (SUSE 10.1 in my case) and you have CLI 'ps' or GUI KDE System Guard at your disposal.
Use XP? then you'll be immediately comfortable with the SUSE KDE UI and no more troubles.

OK Thanks. Later. Blip.

 
At 5:11 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

i get error message -
"The application failed t initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application"

 
At 5:16 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

What's wrong with SysInternals's pskill.exe?

 
At 9:52 PM, Blogger Step said...

Jedi, you are Awesome. That is all. ;)

 
At 2:37 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was using batch file's on my preveous laptop (XP prof) for this

like this one before I started UT2004

[code]

REM taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe

echo killing Simatic tasks

taskkill /f /IM almsrvx.exe
taskkill /f /IM S7ubTstx.exe
taskkill /f /IM S7eptisx.exe
taskkill /f /IM dbsrv7.exe

taskkill /f /IM s7oiehsx.exe
taskkill /f /IM s7asysvx.exe

echo killing SmartCard services

taskkill /f /IM scardsvr.exe
taskkill /f /IM sim9sync.exe
taskkill /f /IM SCARDS32.EXE

echo killing synaptics

taskkill /f /IM SynTPLpr.exe
taskkill /f /IM SynTPEnh.exe

echo remaining tasks :

taskkill /f /IM netdde.exe

echo QuickTime shit :

taskkill /f /IM iTunesHelper.exe
taskkill /f /IM iPodService.exe

echo Windows CE (PDA)
taskkill /f /IM wcescomm.exe

echo Norton Ghost
taskkill /f /IM GhostStartTrayApp.exe
taskkill /f /IM GhostStartService.exe

echo printers & spooler
taskkill /f /IM HPZipm12.exe
taskkill /f /IM spoolsv.exe

tasklist /svc
[/code]

btw. great work on the dayly app's :)

 
At 11:30 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just an FYI, "then" is used for time sequences, "than" is used for comparisons. Otherwise, keep up the great work.

 
At 6:09 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is exactly what i've needed sometimes. Especially handy when the system starts to freeze with activity.

Just a suggestion: A tempoary list saved when tasks are killed, the lists containing the tasks that were killed. The program can then use this list to restart the programs, which could work.

Keep up the great work with the App a day challenge and may the source be with you :D

 
At 8:43 AM, Blogger JG said...

I have to laugh at ppl just killing system services. There's reasons for the proper "net stop" command for shutting down an unneeded services.

 
At 4:07 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anyone having problems with overheating when running quick kill? I have a dell laptop and I'm running xp pro sp2. When I run quick kill, my comp overheats and just shuts off. Anyone know how to fix? Thanks.

 
At 3:46 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

anon, yes, my dell laptop overheated, fried my lcd and my harddrive (no joke). oops. guess i wont be running quickkill anymore.

 
At 9:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

anon...are you really serious? Wow,that sucks. Guess I'm not going to use it either...

 
At 6:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

ok, whenver i run quick kill i cant connect to the internet. why?

 
At 11:51 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You probably are using one of those gay applications that come with your ISP's install disc to "logon" to their service (completely uneccessary if you get a router and use the login credentials section on it.)

This application is great. I use it to kill all the bullshit the IT department insists on running in the backround on my work laptop. I had to use LC5 to crack & get the admin password so I could install the Net Framework v2.0 manually (they locked us out of windows updates), but once I got that installed, this application works like magic! Whatever they had running on my work laptop was killing my ability to use my slingbox remotely. Once I ran this app... pefect 360k+ stream! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR WRITING THIS NEAT LITTLE APP!

 
At 11:32 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

if your laptop really did overheat after running quickkill, it probably had a program running to speed up the fans when it got hot, or something.

If you can't connect to the internet after running QuickKill, you probably have some software that connects you to the internet (maybe a wireless card service?)

 
At 5:29 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, Great App - i was wondering if it is possible however to make QuickKill run automatically on start-up on a system/network where accounts dont have admin priv's and no access to 'msconfig' ?

Ty in advance for any suggestions or 'cant be dones' ...

 
At 8:23 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yo! Anonymous...
you can do it manually by opening regedit.exe with run.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER->
Software->
Microsoft->
windows->
currentversion->
Then click on the folder named run.
add a new value like this:
C:\theapp.exe
Hope it helped!

 
At 10:24 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Application works fine but,

What the F.....k is the "MIRC"?
As far as know it is a S...t software!!

The Hitman

 
At 11:41 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't have any problems running the program but when i start it up it does its thing closing stuff down. When it finishes though it turns off stuff on my computer that i guess shouldn't be turned off cause it basically freezes and i have to restart my comp. Any ideas on what's happening?

 
At 8:05 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

is there any way to get the killed processes back. I have restarted my computer many times but still haven't got the the processes back if so how?

 
At 5:01 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

My Quick kill has stopped working. Has there been some changes?
Thanks for your help

 
At 12:45 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi, very nice and useful app.

 
At 3:47 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Hey I love the idea of this app BUT for MY system I get the BSOD after afew minets of gaming.

What do you think it is?

 
At 9:37 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

it's useless!when restart or turn on the computer again the number of the processes are the same, so you need evry time to click to remove them again and again.

 
At 8:27 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

if the creator of this app is reading this, could you please make another quick-kill that is compatible with vista

 
At 2:27 PM, Anonymous processblocker guy said...

Guys take a look at our Process Blocker freeware tool for blocking unwanted processes. Works under XP/Vista/Win7 x86/x64 and does not require .NET framework.

 
At 2:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Game Prelauncher is better.
Game Prelauncher is a comprehensive Windows system optimizer, developed specially for games. It turns Windows into a gaming platform by yielding all the computer resources to the game alone. To achieve this effect, the program disables most of the services (92% on Win 7) except the critical ones, disables all the start-up programs, the Explorer shell and hundreds of libraries that are registered with it but not used for the operation of the game, sound themes and other objects. When the game is over, the program brings everything back. The program does not affect the quality of the graphics in the game (does not impair it); the graphics remains the way it is specified in user's preferences. The utility has an intuitive user interface.
Now Game Prelauncher is the best solution to optimize games on low\middle-end PCs and laptops.
GamePrelauncher.com

 
At 11:55 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Google Chrome also killed and closed !! Can we get an updated kill list. thanks John

 

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