Most Windows users come into contact with closing windows by force when they press the shutdown button on their computer. Depending on their settings, Windows may force programs to terminate which can result in the aforementioned problems.

Close All is a lightweight portable application for Windows that provides users with an option to close all program windows at once by executing it on the system.

The program has no interface. When you double-click it, it will close down all windows in record time. It will not shut down Windows for you though. It is therefor handy for users who close all open programs and windows manually before they shut down their system.

Probably the best way to use it is to place a shortcut to the program on the Windows desktop, or in the case of Windows 7 users, by pinning it to the taskbar.

The program is offered as a 32-bit and 64-bit edition. The program supports parameters to exclude programs from closing down when the program is executed. For that though, you best create a program shortcut and edit the shortcut properties so that you do not have to enter the parameters whenever you want to close all but select program windows.

Right-click the program executable in Windows Explorer for that and select create shortcut from the context menu. This creates a shortcut in the same directory. Right-click that shortcut now and select properties from the menu.

Locate the target part of the window and add to the end of the path the following paramter

-x="app-to-exclude.exe"

Replace app-to-exclude.exe with the application that you do not want to be closed when the shortcut is used. You can add multiple programs to the list by separating them with the pipe | character. If you do not want Firefox and Windows Explorer to be closed down automatically you would use the following parameter.

-x="firefox.exe|explorer.exe"

Close All can be downloaded from the developer website over at NTWind.

So how does it work? Let us take the usual software application installation. Many installers will ask the user to close all other running programs to avoid conflicts during installation. Smart Close is started when that screen comes up and the option to create a system snapshot and kill all running programs will be selected by the user.

Smart Close kills the programs so that the user can commence the installation. After the installation has finished Smart Close can be started a second time to load the previous state of the system. It will launch the applications that were running at that time again. Most programs that are closed by the software program will be properly closed meaning that they can save system settings and return resources to the computer system.

Smart Close will display the programs and services that it is about to kill. It will also display a window with protected applications that are needed to run the system (explorer.exe..) One interesting aspect is the ability to shutdown services as well.

Please note that Smart Close will merely launch the applications when it restores a previous system snapshot. This basically means that it will not reopen tabs in Firefox.

Smart Close is compatible with all Microsoft operating systems including Windows 95 or Windows XP but not Windows Vista.