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What to Do When Your Computer Freezes
Computers are complex and
sensitive machines. Even
the best and newest computer may, from time to time, experience a
crash or lockup. While a
lockup does not necessarily mean that anything is wrong with your
computer, it does pose the problem of how to resume normal operation
without having to shut down abruptly and reboot (which often sends the
computer into a time-consuming examination of its hard drive to make
sure everything is undamaged).
When your computer locks up
and becomes unresponsive to the mouse and keyboard, press and
hold the Control key (marked Ctrl at the bottom, far left), and the
Alt key (next to the spacebar). While holding both of
these keys, tap the Delete key once.
(Note that the Alt key
rests two or three keys to the right of the Ctrl key, and the Delete
key is on the other side of the keyboard, to the right of the Enter
key. This combination is unlikely to be hit accidentally.) A pop-up dialog box usually appears
in the center of your screen with the words Close Program in its title bar.
Within the box itself is a complete listing of all the programs
currently running on your computer. (Many
of them you may not recognize, because they are background programs you
never interact with.) Often, if
your machine has locked up, one of these programs has the words "Not
Responding" in parentheses to the right of the program name.
Click on this program to select it (it may have been automatically
selected), and then click on the button End Task.
After a second or so, another box will pop up asking you to confirm
the End Task command. Click on
End Task again in the new pop-up box.
Most of the time this will return you to normal
operation; however, computer lockups can be troublesome and some or all of
the following may be necessary:
| The
computer may not know which program is causing the trouble.
In this case, if the words Not Responding do not appear, simply
click the Shut Down button and wait for the computer to shut itself
down. If a dialog box appears indicating that a program is not
responding, click End Task. Once the computer powers down, wait
10-20 seconds and turn it back on. |
| After you select End Task the first
time, it may be that no confirmation box appears and the troublesome
program remains unresponsive. In
this case you will have to select Control-Alt-Delete again.
This is likely to reboot your computer.
This reboot should operate more smoothly than the sudden power
loss of being abruptly shut off.
Instead of a reboot, it may cause a blue screen to appear,
asking you if you want to wait a bit longer for the troublesome
program to respond or if you really mean to restart the computer.
In cases where the lockup is not responding to the End Task
command, you may have to hit Control-Alt-Delete as many times as
necessary to reboot the computer. |
|
The
Close Program Box may not appear. If this is the case you have
no option but to shut down "illegally" by turning off the
computer. On many newer computers, you must hold the power
button in (10 or more seconds) until the power goes off - then release the power
button. Wait 10-20 seconds before turning it back on.
Windows will do a scandisk before starting up again.
(Warning:
although rare, sudden power loss to the computer, such as shutting it
down without properly closing out Windows, can result in damage to the
Windows operating system itself and, in very rare cases, a hard drive
crash resulting in physical damage to the hard drive.) |
As a last resort, you may have to use the Reset button on your computer (if it has one), or, if all else fails, simply turn off the power as described above.
(Warning:
although rare, sudden power loss to the computer, such as shutting it
down without properly closing out Windows, can result in damage to the
Windows operating system itself and, in very rare cases, a hard drive
crash resulting in physical damage to the hard drive. |
In
the event of lockups, Windows programs will often try to recover the last
document or file on which you were working; however, you can still lose data
and you should always Save routinely to avoid data loss in the event of a
power failure, crash, or lockup.
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