When we say that we are going to “kill” a process, it is because originally in English the command is “killSo it’s a term that we’ve inherited from the original language of the operating system. However, in Spanish this practice is simply called «Finish homework«.
How do you kill processes in Windows?
Since the Task Manager exists in Windows, we have been able to do it in a visual and very simple way (before its introduction in 1996, it might also be done but through the command line, precisely with the kill command), so The first thing you should do is open the Windows task manager. To do this you have several possibilities, but the fastest ones are to press the key combination CTRL + SHIFT + ESC, or click with the right mouse button on the Start icon and then select Task Manager. Then, you have to go to the Processes tab, although it is the one that appears by default in both Windows 10 and Windows 11.
To kill or end the processes, we will simply have to search for them in this list (which, by the way, you can order by name, by memory consumption, etc. just by clicking on the name of the column), select it with the left mouse button, and click on the button located at the bottom right called “End task”.
Alternatively, you can also just right-click on the process you want to kill, and then select the End task option. Be very careful, because in this case Windows will not ask you for confirmation, and as soon as you press the End task button, Windows will send the Kill command and the process will end.
The processes you can safely kill
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are a series of processes that are generally active in Windows by default, and if you “kill” them, you will be able to free up memory and CPU time, or in other words, you will be able to free up resources on the computer. system and thus you will obtain a better performance. We warn you that in modern PCs this is not noticeable in excess, but in older PCs or in computers that are saturated by other tasks, it can be noticeable and quite a lot.
- Calculator.exe: As you might guess from its name, it is the Windows calculator, and it is curious that the process is always active in the background even if you have not opened the calculator. Don’t worry, you can kill it without fear and when you want to open the calculator, it will start once more without problem.
- NewsAndInterests.exe: This process is related to the News Widget on the taskbar. If you kill it, it will disappear, but if you don’t use it, then better make it non-memory resident to gain some performance.
- Gamingservices.exeNote: If you don’t use the Xbox App or Windows Game Bar, you don’t need this process at all, and removing it will free up a lot of memory on your computer.
- OneDrive.exe: As the name suggests, this process has to do with Microsoft OneDrive, which is installed and enabled by default. If you don’t use it, you know.
- CTFmon.exe: This process is related to the text input devices on the computer. If you don’t use a pen tablet, voice recognition, etc. and you only use keyboard and mouse, you can kill him without problem.
- PhoneExperienceHost.exe: This is another example of an app running in the background that is of no use to most users. It is only used if you have a phone connected to the PC and synchronized.
- GrooveMusic.exe: The built-in music player in Windows is probably the least used in history, and yet Microsoft insists on leaving it resident in memory.
There are some other processes that you might safely kill and that will improve system performance, but in some cases you might miss their features. We refer to processes that have the name “update”, such as Adobe Acrobat Update Service or WPS Office Update Service. Kill them or not, it’s up to you.
