TECH SATURDAY, BECAUSE ON TUESDAY, STUFF HAPPENED – KILLING AN UNWANTED OR FAILING PROGRAM (THREAD) IN MICROSOFT

Where the Cable Cars really DO go half-way to the stars. . .

A few weeks back, I got my panties in a wad, because some idiot hax0r came up with a terrible scheme to “spoof” the public and buy his stuff, which was worthless and bug-ridden and a security threat. While that in itself was not particularly dangerous, his method for doing so was, and I, being ever alert to such chicanery, decided to start “Tech Tuesdays” for people who aren’t necessarily all that familiar with what’s under the hood of the family time-waster. 

There’s a reason for this; I live in a strange neighborhood, that’s one-half ‘bangers and ‘hos and the other half sweet grannies and their grandkids. Then, there are folks like me, who have, shall we say, “interesting and storied pasts” and live rather comfortably between the two. My business partner is a former DOD employee who mustered out after the start of the second Gulf War. He’s my hardware guru. I have been in the business long enough and traveled the back alleys and by-ways of the computer universe to keep abreast of the threats and oddities and transmogrifications of various software worms, viruses and Trojans to keep the little old grannies and their kiddies safe.

I host a network called “FBI Surveillance Van” for all the would-be internet thieves near me (It's protected by a hexi-decimal cypher, so unless Einstein has been reincarnated as a crackhead, I'm safe) . The CIA is going to be setting up shop soon. I love to keep ‘em guessing. Anyway, after the nasty “spoof” found here, I decided it would be a nice thing if I just put up some simple things for folks to help keep their own systems free of mice, lice, tics and bugs. I can’t help you with Microsoft; it’s a giant bug-patch, all unto itself. I don’t touch Apple. It’s a JAVA nest of Hell and I hate their processors. Call me a Luddite, but I use no smart-phone, however, I’m home most of the time.

Today, I wanted to talk about what happens when something just stops, goes into a business loop, contemplates it's navel, refuses to run, or crash completely, and just sits there, eating up your CPU, or Central Processing Unit. This is where all of the instructions are carried out; the literal brain of your computer. You can have the cleanest, leanest, meanest system in the world and if your Candy Crush Client (why?) seizes up, you are going to sit there until Doomsday, waiting for the bitch to do anything. I don't care of you have an AMD Quad Core or an INTEL hoo-ha processor, that brain is going to churn and churn over some stupid command, caught in an endless, infinite, "do loop". 

While not necessarily the fault of the gaming code within Candy Crush, certain outside elements on your system itself, will produce "do loop" results. Or, knowing Candy Crush, it's just shitty programming (again, why?). The one executable command will repeat into infinity, unless you, the weary and aging user, step in to halt the bitch. 

Here are the simple steps for that; I actually used SETI@home for the demonstration, because, they are astronomers, not programmers, and after you make SETI 'snooze', there is no way to halt the client. In my case, I 'snooze' first, because I do NOT want to corrupt my data, so I suspend the operation:

Once I see that red bar to the left of SETI@home v7, I know my work is saved and I can continue.

courtesy: Cracked.com Photoplasty        

Unlike Scotty here; the poor bastard in the Transporter never knew what hit him.

Aight! Fun time over! Now, do a RIGHT mouse click on your Windows task bar at the bottom of your screen, or at the side. You're going to be looking for "Task Manager".

It works in Windows Vista and 7. To get to it in Windows XP, use keyboard strokes <CTRL> + <ALT> + <DEL> at the same time, and select "Task Manager". I don't know nothin' about no Windows 8. Windows 8 looks like a pretend OS. Screw Microsoft. 

Windows Task Manager Processes screen shows all of the "threads" of the applications you are running, or more aptly, not running at the time. Look for your offender and highlight it. Click "End Process".

You will always see this message; if you clicked on something else by mistake, and the process is crucial to the running of your system, Windows will NOT allow the killing of the thread to take place!

Once I "kill" the boinc.exe process, all subordinate processes will die as well. You can do the same with Chrome, or any application, but ALWAYS kill the *.exe. It is a cleaner way to exit the program and you lessen the chance of corrupting any *.dll files or any other subordinate files. 

That's all there is to it. Of course, if it happens continually, shoot me a line, or try closing other programs before running whatever it is that freezes on you. I can't help you with your Candy Crush addiction. Level 70? My, my, my, my, my.

Don't forget! March 21st is the date for the Great Theme Reveal! The A-to-Z Challenge is almost upon us and you don't want to be caught theme-less! Check us out at #teamDamyanti on  the A-to-Z Challenge Blog! I am one of the fabulous Damyanti's assistant's this year, along with my great team members, Vidya Sury, Anna Tan, Samantha Geary-Jones, Guilie Castillo Oriard, Csenge Zalka, and Jemima Pett, who at this very moment has a post about her own Theme Reveal!