How to remove ctfmon.exe from PC

Have you ever wondered what the mysterious ctfmon.exe is? That’s a Microsoft background process which activates both the Microsoft Office Language Bar and Alternative User Input TIP. This process checks if a running program ever needs an alternative user input service, such as pen tablet, speech or onscreen inputs for foreign languages.

Those who ever make use of the Microsoft Office Bar, pen tablets and other input devices will certainly need to keep cftmon.exe on. However, if you never need the Office Language Bar or other input device, you might as well switch the ctfmon service off to free up some RAM if nothing else. Furthermore, cftmon can also crash Windows with certain installed languages.

Here’s how to remove ctfmon from PC

Turn off advanced text services in Windows XP

Windows XP includes a Turn off advanced text services setting that you can switch ctfmon.exe off with. However, more recent Windows platforms don’t have that option. XP users can configure advanced text services as follows.

• First, open the Windows XP Control Panel.
• Click Regional and Language Options to open a Regional and Language Options window.
• Select the Languages tab on the window.
• Then you can press a Details button to open a Text Services window.
• Click the Advanced tab, and then select the Turn off advanced text services option. That will close the ctfmon process.

Remove ctfmon.exe from Windows Startup

You might find ctfmon listed in the startup items. If that’s the case, the process is starting with Windows. This is how you can remove ctfmon from the OS startup.

• Open the Task Manager by right-clicking the taskbar and selecting Task Manager.
• Click the Start-up tab to open the list of startup software below.

• If the Start-up tab lists ctfmon, select it and press the Disable button.
• In earlier Windows platforms, you can open the Startup tab in MSConfig. Press the Win key + R hotkey, and enter ‘msconfig’ in the Run text box.
• Press the OK button, and then you can click a Startup tab on the System Configuration Window.

Remove ctfmon with CTFMON-Remover

CTFMON-Remover is software that purges the ctfmon process from Windows. The software tells you if the process is installed, running and starting automatically. You can add the program to Windows by clicking CtfmonRemoverEN-v2.3.zip on this page. CTFMON-Remover is compatible with the latest Windows platforms.

• When you’ve saved the Zip to a folder, open File Explorer.
• Open CTFMON-Remover’s compressed folder, and press the Extract all button.
• Press the Extract button to extract the folder.
• Click CtfmonRemover to open the software as in the snapshot directly below.

• Press the Deactivate CTFMON-Remover button to terminate the ctfmon process.
• You can press Restore CTFMON.EXE to restart ctfmon.exe if required.

Unregister DLLs

You can unregister the DLLs needed for alternative input services. That might also effectively terminate ctfmon.exe. Press the Win key + R hotkey to launch Run. Input ‘Regsvr32.exe /u msimtf.dll’ in the Run text box, and press OK. Then enter ‘Regsvr32.exe /u msctf.dll’ in Run’s text box. Thereafter, restart the Windows OS.

So that’s how you can remove the ctfmon.exe service in Windows. When you’ve deactivated ctfmon.exe, it should no longer be listed on the Processes tab in Task Manager.

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