Making ALT-F4 work like a mean son of a


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Two issues right now,

1. Some apps block ALT-F4 (Bad ones mostly like Source Engine)

2. If an application is stuck ALT-F4 doesn't do anything

I had games for example crash, without quitting, and getting to the task manager was impossible (can't bring it up above the crashed game to kill it).

Only solution was to log off.

Horribly annoying.

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Just use Alt + Tab to get out of there.

I guess, the applications/games who block Alt+F4 also blocks all the combination to bring windows front.

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I find that Ctrl + Shift + Esc sometimes works better than Alt + Tab to bring up the Task Manager and kill a program.

I've always used either Ctrl+Alt+Delete or Ctrl+Shift+Esc instead of Alt+F4. I've found it to be far more effective. Is there a reason these key combinations don't work in this situation?
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Two issues right now,

1. Some apps block ALT-F4 (Bad ones mostly like Source Engine)

2. If an application is stuck ALT-F4 doesn't do anything

I had games for example crash, without quitting, and getting to the task manager was impossible (can't bring it up above the crashed game to kill it).

Only solution was to log off.

Horribly annoying.

 

What you describe happens to me from time to time, but always with a select few games... The last one for me was... Skyrim.  If a game crashes in such a way where your primary display is stuck with that crashed game in the foreground (even when not in focus), there are several options.

 

1. If you?re in a game that continually does this, and you have two monitors, always leave task manager running on your secondary display before you launch the problematic game.

 

2. Switch users into an Administrator account, and kill the game's process from that user.  Then you can then log off the Admin user, back into your normal user, and everything will be as you left it except the game you killed.

 

3. If you only have one monitor, but know ahead of time that a game is probably going to seize on you again, pre-create a shortcut that is configured to kill the process and give it a key binding.  An example of how to create a shortcut that could kill Skyrim would be as follows:

 

Right-Click on Desktop and create a new shortcut

 

Under "Type the location of the item:" enter the following command:

powershell Stop-Process -Name "tesv" -Force

When you use Stop-Process, the "Name" will probably be what you see in Task Manager's processes, with .exe removed.  Otherwise to see a process list, launch PowerShell and run "Get-Process" to see a list of everything running, or "(Get-Process).Name" to see only the name of everything running.

 

In my case I name the shortcut "Kill Skyrim"

 

Get properties on the new shortcut, then click in the Shortcut Key: field.

 

Now press the keys you wish to assign as a shortcut, like ctrl-alt-k.

 

 

Now, so long as you can make it so that Windows thinks the game is no longer in focus, such as by using ctrl-alt-delete and then selecting the task manager (even if task manager is already launched), you should now be able to use ctrl-alt-k to kill the game. I don't know if all game titles would require that they lose focus in order for the shortcut to work, but assume that most will require it.

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Take a look at SuperF4, it may be just what you need; instead of asking the application to terminate it kills the process directly.

 

It's a little program a friend wrote sometime ago, and I haven't really tried it for sometime now but I remember it working fine in Windows 7, so it may do just as well in Windows 8.

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