KillEmAll 5.0 Beta

[Exterminator]

KillEmAll v5 (built on d7x technology)
Currently in open BETA testing, download and known issues listed below.

Instantly close everything on your desktop


KillEmAll is a ‘panic’ button with an ‘ask questions later’ attitude, designed to neutralize, terminate, and later identify all non-essential running programs.
Great for quickly closing unwanted apps, system inspection, (and with new editions on the way) even malware removal!

Specifically KillEmAll terminates every (currently running) program on your computer except essential Windows processes.

• The best usage case for KillEmAll to most users, is to close all open web browser windows if you get a suspected malicious popup while visiting a website.
  1. The the reason you don’t simply close or “X out” the popup is because malicious code can be run even if you click the X button — it is after all just another button, you might as well be clicking “OK“ or “Yes, please do what you want with my PC…“ but if you don’t click anything and KillEmAll does the work, forcing the application’s process to close without any additional code execution.
• Other more mundane tasks include the advantage of quickly closing all applications before performing maintenance on your PC, general troubleshooting, or playing resource intensive games.
• Obviously, any data used by the applications being closed, if not previously saved, will be lost!

New Features Coming Soon:

• Prevent selected programs from running
• Uninstall programs
• Schedule automated tasks
• Disable automatic updating on every startup
• Restore previous window positions on startup

Spoiler: Beta and current issues information

There are still a few quirks we’re trying to work out, but we feel it’s complete enough to ask for the community’s input and testing on! Please review the known issues which Nick is currently working away on, but feel free to contact us and let us know if there are any other items you come across not listed here! You can review the show episode we did on the features and functionality here:

The best way to contact us would be joining our chat on our live show times (schedule shown on Foolish Tech Show) but you can also use our contact form here. Thanks for taking the time to test this release and help us work out any issues prior to the full v5.0 release!

Current Known Issues:

• In Windows 8.1 and 10 (32/64bit) KillEmAll may fail to recognize critical Windows programs and attempt to terminate them. It will in all test cases fail to terminate these processes. KillEmAll is denied access to certain critical processes on these platforms through existing methods to determine the process path and other executable information from critical Windows processes, potentially including other 3rd party processes. A fix to this issue is a top priority.
• Some programs may fail to terminate under certain circumstances, particularly Anti-Virus and some other Malware prevention programs.
• Some programs will be terminated, however the ‘result’ and/or terminated/failed counters may be inaccurate.
• The ‘Restart Program’ option in the right-click menu for a process may fail to restart the process after killing it under certain circumstances.
• Items may not size/position themselves as expected when manipulating the program’s resizable windows.
• (Windows XP/2003 Only) When terminating a process in Windows 5.2 and below, 1 MiB or more may be leaked from each of the target’s threads that are terminated. The NT kernel in 5.2 and below does not free the thread’s initial stack, causing the resource leak. We are considering a fix for a future version, despite the age of these operating systems which does make it less of a priority.

For d7II users you will need to add this as a custom app and not use the internal d7II KillEmAll functionality if you would like to add this to your current workflow (just remember it’s BETA)

 

[Moose]

Do you know how often it will be updated?

Kind regards,

 

[Exterminator]

Do you know how often it will be updated?

Kind regards,

I do not know how often it is updated. I have tried it and it seemed to work well.
By default it didn't close and important Windows processes however it is still in Beta so if anyone is going to try this they should have a backup and save any data as well.
The nice thing is the ability to customize it.The main features such as forcing an apps process to close without any further code execution as well as closing all apps before doing maintenance are probably the most useful.

 

[Av Gurus]

This is the same as Rkill or...?

 

[DracusNarcrym]

This is the same as Rkill or...?

Seems to be, but not entirely.

RKill operates on various built-in algorithms for identifying which processes to terminate. It's rather basic and only terminates a variety of severe identifiable threats, which usually obstruct other anti-malware software (such as Malwarebytes Anti-Malware) from running.

KillEmAll offers extended functionality on a concept similar to that of RKill, but as you can see it is a more fully-fledged application with additional functions and options.
Also, the purpose of KillEmAll is different from that of RKill: While RKill attempts to kill known malware processes that block other security software from running, KillEmAll terminates any and all procecess running on the system, other than essential Windows processes. So, the difference lies in that KillEmAll is designed to terminate any process other than important system processes, and not just specific malware processes.

 

[jamescv7]

Interesting alternative to Rkill, since the features are expand to terminate all processes that the user may think its unresponsive of course that tool is intended to understand by user awareness.