Unable to terminate the Task Manager process in any manner... prevents gameplay.
Unable to terminate the Task Manager process in any manner... prevents gameplay.
Essentially I played Risen (2009) on Steam for a while, then suddenly it crashed after a few days of use while I was switching tabs. The screen went black and everything else worked fine. I couldn't exit the game in any way. After rebooting, it still appeared as "On" in Task Manager and I couldn't close it through Steam either. Now I can't play any other games, including Risen. When I tried to end it via Task Manager, I got an error saying "Unable to terminate process." I've tried shutting down the PC multiple times (5 times), using kill task or CMD commands, uninstalling the game several ways, and even using Process Hacker 2 without success. What should I do? Maybe just replace the SSD? (just kidding) Need help!
Open Task Manager, select the process, go to details, right-click it, choose Open File Location. Record the EXE path. Restart the PC several times until the diagnostic prompt appears. Launch Command Prompt and remove the EXE file.
I’m attempting to hold the button while confirming my intent. The issue persists—PC restarts and restarts the shutdown process even before logging into Steam.
Shutdown behavior in Windows 10 can be unexpected, so a dry boot may offer a solution. A restart usually ends running tasks too. I faced this problem with Warframe recently and tried all possible fixes without shutting down, but it didn’t work. My game didn’t survive a clean restart either. Could there be other user accounts or recent logins keeping the process alive? Have you logged out of any accounts or closed applications beforehand?
Forgot to mention - I'm on Windows 11 64-bit. There's only 1 other account, but I only used it once over a year ago, nothing installed on it.
It gives a more suspicious impression by pretending to be the game's installer, which can feel like malicious software. However, enabling features such as fast startup might prevent a proper shutdown.
All signs led to the correct Steam installation directory, and the game was detected as active. It ran with minimal resource usage—almost no GPU or CPU load, just a small RAM footprint. I’m not sure if it’s malicious, but I’ll stay alert. After three attempts to terminate it by holding the power button, it crashed on the third try. Thank you for your help—I’m back in the game!