I have my taskbar set to “Use small taskbar buttons” and “Never combine”, probably as much out of habit as anything else. This means that when I pin programs to the taskbar, opening one of them, suddenly making it display a title for one or more windows, will push any pinned programs to its right further towards the right edge of the screen. In turn, this means that my pinned programs are almost never where I expect to find them, and I have to look around. Annoying.

The classic “Quick Launch” solved this by only displaying a launch shortcut, and never turning into the actual taskbar entry for the program it launched. Thus they all stay neatly in place next to the start button.

Like this:

Not like this:

Well, Windows 10 can do this too, though it is slightly harder to enable than on previous editions of the operating system.

In short:

1. Right click the taskbar
2. Select “Toolbars => New Toolbar…”
3. Enter “shell:Quick Lauch” into the “Folder” field and press enter (note the lack of a space between : and Q)
4. Press “Select folder”
5. Notice the “Quick Launch” appearing next to the systray.
6. Right click the taskbar again and unlock it (click “Lock the taskbar”)
7. Right click the toolbar header at the left side of the quick launch
8. Deselect “Show Text” and “Show title”
9. Drag the quick launch to where you want it
10. Lock the taskbar again

A more detailed description can be found here. I archived a copy here.

I have to admit this is cargo cult SQL to me, but here’s how to find running queries, sorted by their total elapsed time:

SELECT [sqltext].[TEXT],
[req].[session_id],
[req].[status],
[req].[command],
[req].[cpu_time],
[req].[total_elapsed_time]
FROM [sys].[dm_exec_requests] [req]
CROSS APPLY [sys].[dm_exec_sql_text](sql_handle) AS sqltext
ORDER BY [req].[total_elapsed_time] DESC

To kill a given query, use:

kill <session_id>

..without the brackets <>, where session_id is the corresponding column output from the query above

If you want to kill all long running queries in a single go, try something like this:

DECLARE @cmd varchar(8000) = '';
SELECT @cmd = @cmd + 'kill ' + CONVERT(varchar(5), req.session_id) + ';'
FROM sys.dm_exec_requests req
CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(sql_handle) AS sqltext where req.total_elapsed_time > 15000

SELECT @cmd;

EXEC(@cmd);

Adjust the ‘15000’ (milliseconds) timeout to a reasonable time for your application.

You’re welcome.