LOL. Original post in 2019...and still no suggestion from ESRI? Wow, that's should be embarassing for ESRI. I'm faced with the same issue, I am running a tool, and my processing extent was not set properly, and the are it's processing is HUGE....so I need to stop it. Yesterday, I stopped it and my application was hanging for hours. Finally had to close from the task manager...
So this AM, I figured I would try a different method. This is my first "hit" in google....lol...really, there is no fix?