Applications that are not responding might be waiting for other processes to finish, or for system resources to become available, before they can continue. Windows Resource Monitor allows you to view a process wait chain, and to end processes that are preventing a program from working properly.

A process that is not responding will appear as a red entry in the CPU table of the Overview tab, and in the Processes table of the CPU tab.

Caution

You should use Resource Monitor to end a process only if you are unable to close the program by normal means. If an open program is associated with the process, it will close immediately and you will lose any unsaved data. Ending a system process might result in system instability and data loss.
To analyze a process using Resource Monitor

  1. To start Resource Monitor, click Start, click in the Start Search box, type resmon.exe, and then press ENTER.

  2. In the key table of any Resource Monitor tab, in the Image column, right-click the executable name of the process you want to analyze, and then click Analyze Wait Chain.

  3. If the process is running normally and is not waiting for any other processes, no wait chain information will be displayed.

    If the process is waiting for another process, a tree organized by dependency on other processes will be displayed.

    Note

    Many system processes depend on other processes and services for normal operation. Resource Monitor will display wait chain information for any process. If a process entry in the table is not red, if the process status is Running, and if the program is operating normally, no user action should be required.

  4. If a wait chain tree is displayed, you can end one or more of the processes in the tree by selecting the check boxes next to the process names and clicking End process.

Additional references

  • Use Resource Monitor to Control Processes and Services
  • Use Resource Monitor to View Handles and Modules