This tip will show you how to close a browser that has become unresponsive or when you click something malicious and suddenly, you\u2019re faced with a tech support scam popup or another malicious popup that you can’t seem to get away from… and trying to close the browser using the “X” in the top right corner or right-clicking the browser’s icon in the taskbar and clicking “Close window” doesn’t work.<\/span><\/p>\n CTRL+F4<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019ll do the easiest one first. If you just want to close the current tab (the one you\u2019re viewing), just press CTRL+F4.\u00a0 This is a quick and easy way to close the tab you\u2019re viewing. This will come in handy if you can\u2019t close the tab normally.<\/span><\/p>\n ALT+F4<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n If your browser is frozen or you have run into a malicious scam popup, you may not be able to close the tab. In this case, while your browser is open and you\u2019re looking at it (it\u2019s in focus) try using ALT+F4<\/span><\/p>\n Task Manager<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n If neither of the above work for you can try opening Task Manager (CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) and look in the processes tab. Right-click on any browser process and choose \u201cEnd process\u201d. Keep in mind there may be several processes running for the same browser. You need to right-click on each and choose \u201cEnd process\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n Taskkill<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n We’re going to show you how to use Taskkill to kill all open instances of a browser with one simple command. <\/span><\/p>\n Open a command prompt:<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014 On Windows 8.1, right-click on the start button and click Command prompt.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014 On Windows 10 and 11, type CMD in taskbar search and press Enter.<\/span><\/p>\n At the prompt in the Command prompt window, type the following (remember these commands must be typed exactly as far as spacing goes \u2013 they are not case sensitive though).<\/span><\/p>\n To close all instances of Chrome type:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Taskkill \/im chrome.exe \/f<\/span><\/p>\n To close all instances of Firefox type:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Taskkill \/im firefox.exe \/f<\/span><\/p>\n To close all instances of Microsoft Edge type:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Taskkill \/im msedge.exe \/f<\/span><\/p>\n Remember:<\/strong> When you close your browser using ALT + F4 or Taskkill, and you reopen your browser, most browsers will attempt to restore the tabs that were open when you forced it to close. BUT … If you\u2019re trying to get away from a tech support scam or malicious popup advertisements, or a malicious website, the last thing you want to do is let your browser restore the tabs\/pages that were open.<\/strong><\/em> If you allow that you\u2019re likely to find yourself caught in a never-ending circle. Never allow your browser to restore the tabs that were open when you force your browser to close to stop a scam, popup advertisement, or other incidents.<\/span><\/p>\n Restart your computer<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Finally, you always have the option to restart your computer if you run into something malicious on the internet. That will close all open programs. Again, remember, if you force your browser to close by restarting your computer to get away from a problem you\u2019ve run into on the Web, don\u2019t allow your browser to reopen the pages that were open when you forced the browser to close.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Now you know what to do the next time you run into a tech support scam popup that tells you your computer has 9 million viruses and if you close the scam ad all your files will be deleted \u2013 and urging you to call 1-800-XXX-MMMM to fix your computer. You will know what to do \u2014 right?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How to Close Your Browser in a Hurry This tip will show you how to close a browser that has become unresponsive or when you click something malicious and suddenly, you\u2019re faced with a tech support scam popup or another malicious popup that you can’t seem to get away from… and trying to close the browser\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1655,1462,2574,2659,2660,1680],"tags":[1952],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22052,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22051\/revisions\/22052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Cloudeight](\"https:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/images\/2020\/kill-ff.png\")
\n<\/span>Above: Successfully closing all Firefox and all open tabs using Taskkill.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n