Under
Windows NT (Win2000), it is rather simple to kill the
freecell.exe process. Simply hit
Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up
Windows Task Manager, and find freecell.exe in the list; right click, selecting
End Process.
For those more desperate, you can simply yank the power off of your
machine. If you are on a public internet terminal, and still want to be able to keep your score, you may not have access to regedit, or
Task Manager, you are in tough times. This is when desperation comes into play. Since there is no really good way to jam the game so that it doesn't respond; you will either have to win or employ a well known cheat ctrl-shift-f10. There are also auto-win codes and the like for this.
Because of the Windows
event model and the way freecell draws it's
dialogs (probably with
DialogBox()), it's really hard to get it to think that it is
not responding. Windows 2000 normally tracks the (X) in the corner and numerous clicks to the program without response will cause it to bring up the
End Task dialog. However, since it draws a modal dialog, you cannot kill it like that. Of course the Alt-Ctrl-Del trick mentioned above won't work, because that will bring up the lock workstation WinLogon Dialog.
Back to the point: If you are THAT desperate to win
FreeCell, you can kill the process. I will sadly admit, I have done that in a fit of rage several (
hundred) times... And to this day, I have rarely ever lost at
Freecell, but that's because of my sheer skill at it. Um.... yeah.