Kill Em All, Processes That Is
This is a tool I use more often than I probably should. Mostly because of the sheer number of tabs and Chrome windows I've got going at once. Every so often the laptop grinds to a halt, fan on full blast, and I'm stuck fighting to click "wait" on that "this page is not responding" popup.
And of course, that's the exact moment something urgent comes to mind that needs attention right now. Windows freezing, other programs stalling, everything pinned at 110%.
The old ctrl-alt-delete slog
I used to hit the old ctrl-alt-delete, give my fingers a little yoga stretch, and open Task Manager. Then it was down the list one by one, "end process," "end process," shutting down anything and everything just to claw back some semblance of the machine I started with. Eventually I'd free up enough resources to do the thing I needed to do, and more to the point, enough virtual memory to open more tabs and get back to cruising.
That whole ritual of shutting down process after process was tedious and slow. And since it always happened when the computer was already at its worst, it came with plenty of frustration.
Enter Kill Em All
Let me introduce a nice piece of software: Kill Em All, as in, kill all the processes. And a fair bit more.
This is one of the tools I reach for when the machine bogs down. On opening it, I flag the important processes and separate them from the junk, and all those unnecessary processes are gone. Poof. Killed.
More than a process killer
It doesn't stop at killing processes. You can set firewall rules and block programs from network access. Handy for some sneaky offline activations (old-school Photoshop, I'm looking at you) or for stopping Apple from constantly phoning home through the iTunes "Helper." Blocked. No network for you.
It'll also uninstall those stubborn applications that won't go quietly the usual way.
For those who want it, there's a CMD-line version, plus a portable build so you can run it straight off a USB stick with nothing installed on the machine.
There you have it: your resource cleaner-upper. Kill Em All, over at d7xtech.com/killemall.
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