Here are a few apps, which help you hill all running processes or open applications instantly in a click. Use them if you need to do it frequently. I too prefer to use one of these, rather than closing each app one at a time.

Here is a batch file which determines all the process started by the user and terminates all these processes.

It kills only the processes started by the user. These processes includes tray applications and background applications.

Using this batch file you can free up lots of RAM before starting any memory intensive application like Games or Video Encoders.You don’t have terminate each and every application to free up RAM.

This batch file cannot kill protected applications like that of Anti-Virus and Firewall

To kill all running apps just download kill.bat and double click on it.

There’s another one KillThemAll created by a Neowin user which does the same, but  gives the user a chance to save his data. It leaves Explorer open.

Might as well mention, I use CloseAll. It is a similar freeware tool which helps you to close all running applications & windows instantly with one click.

If you have liked this post, you might want to check out some more, on topics like Freeware.