ProcessKO is a portable free tool which helps you to close, restart and work with Windows processes.

At its simplest, ProcessKO allows you to close any user program (not system processes) by right-clicking its system tray icon, selecting "Instant K.O." and choosing your target process from the list. A similar "Restart" menu will close and relaunch a process, perhaps useful if it's locked up.

Launch the ProcessKO console and you're also able to add "Favourites", processes you're working with on a regular basis. Tiny icons are displayed for every Favourite, and you can then close them instantly with a click. (Terminating any process without warning is risky, so ProcessKO demands that you check an "I am an expert and I know what I am doing" before this will work. Fortunately you only need to do this once.)

Right-click a favourite and there's an option to run that process, too, which turns ProcessKO into a simple launcher.

A "KO Timer" feature monitors your system for whatever processes you specify, closing them automatically after a given delay (2 to 19 seconds).

A "Restart" hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+F5) restarts the foreground application on demand.

There's even a system shutdown menu, also accessible from the system tray. This offers the usual "Shut down", "Restart", "Log off", "Hibernate" and "Standby" options, and in two flavours. "Normal" acts just like the regular Windows options, but "Aggressive" works immediately, forcing programs to close even if they've unsaved data.