For clarification on our previous post regarding the red X button: The article was about the red X because that’s what most people know, but it also applies to closing an application in any standard method not involving any actual force-terminate means. This includes the red X in the top right of the ‘window’ or form, the ALT+F4 keyboard combination, and also even by using the standard “End Task” option within Windows Task Manager!! See the linked article for more technical information: the Query_Unload event. (Note the article referenced is for the VB language, and the same ‘event’ exists for all languages targeting the Windows platform (and I would assume any other OS using a ‘forms’ UI) however the ‘event’ or procedure may be named differently for other languages.
The only way to effectively terminate an application (without allowing it to execute more code) is to use an application designed to use the TerminateProcess API function in conjunction with the appropriate security access token and flags outlined here. By default Task Manager doesn’t do this (at first) only if an application doesn’t respond to a previous terminate request (and only then I think with the End Process Tree function, I’ll have to double check…)
What apps do this particular style of termination? As mentioned earlier, our existing free tool KillEmAll, one of our free tech tools, can terminate all non-essential processes effectively with one click (by using TerminateProcess with the appropriate flags and security token) as mentioned above, as well as the upcoming CryptoPrevent v8 which will contain a built-in one-click simplified interface for our existing KillEmAll style termination methods, both via in-app and a system tray icon!
There’s also good old tskill or taskkill from a console window with the /F parameter at the command line..
