Anigozanthos

Having recently added a Dell Wireless Broadband card to my laptop I've found one annoying "undocumented feature".

If I open the Connection Manager (eg via the icon in the systray) then close it without connecting to my Internet service, then little dmbcu.exe processes are left behind. Sometimes they're left behind after connecting to the Internet too.

This creates a problem when shutting down or hibernating as these rogue processes each need to be closed before the laptop will actually shutdown or hibernate. Windows will ask automatically, but it's still quite annoying, particularly when you just want to put the laptop away and not click away ending processes.

What I've done is create a shortcut to the built-in Windows Taskkill application, telling it to kill any process called "dmbcu.exe".

If anybody else wants to do this, here's how:

1. Create a new shortcut, eg on your desktop or in your Start menu folder. I created mine in my Dell programs sub-folder on the Start menu.
   
2. The item location is C:\WINDOWS\system32\taskkill.exe. I named mine "Kill Zombies", but you can be creative here!
   
3. Next, edit the properties of the shortcut. Change the Target field so that it reads C:\WINDOWS\system32\taskkill.exe /f /fi "IMAGENAME eq dmbcu.exe". Change Run to "Minimized", and you can change the icon to something more appropriate too - I chose a red "X".
   

Now I just need to remember to run this shortcut everytime I finish with the connection. Naturally, I'd much rather Dell fixed this bug, but this workaround will do for now.