You can also prevent the program from closing IE windows and from turning off Windows services. If you just want to shut down applications and not worry about snapshots and restoring, you can uncheck the appropriate boxes.

On the following screen, you’ll see a couple of checkboxes that let you decide what actions to take. Once you have it installed, you can begin by creating a snapshot and closing all programs, restoring a snapshot (restore apps), or changing the program settings. The program tries not to be stupid by not shutting down services that Windows needs in order to be able to run, but it’s not perfect. It actually comes with a list of services that it deems as closable, but you can add or subtract if you know what you’re doing. Another really nice feature about SmartClose is that you can configure it to shutdown or stop Windows services also. That way instead of having to click on 5 different icons, etc, you can quickly start up applications using SmartClose. It can even restore Explorer and Internet Explorer windows to their previous locations on the screen. This is actually a very useful program for many people because you can startup 4 to 5 of your favorite apps and then save a snapshot, which you can them simply restore at any time by using the program. With SmartClose, the process is a bit slower than Close All, as it takes a snapshot of all of your currently running programs, so that you can restore them later on.

This same issue also occurs with Smart Close even though it has an option to kill programs, it doesn’t seem to work properly. Close All does not kill the process in this instance, so you have to manually close that particular app. Another caveat to the program is that if you have a program open with unsaved data, the program will ask you if you want to save your data. Obviously, your computer will be running different applications and your results may vary, but Close All does the best job of closing the most apps.Īs I mentioned earlier, there is no way to restore the apps you shut down using Close All. Just click OK and you’re done! For test purposes, I opened about 10 to 15 programs on a Windows 7 PC and Close All was able to shut them all down. By default, all apps are selected, but you can uncheck an app if you do not want to close it.

How to force close all windows on mac