Tuesday, May 13, 2008
What To Do When the Computer Freezes
You are watching a video on your computer and running a few programs in the background. All of a sudden the video freezes or slows down. What do you do?
When this happened to one guy, he turned off his computer. When he turned it back on, it would not work properly. Even after using a restore program, it still would not work. Since one of my programs was running in the background, he blamed it on my program. The real problem was that he reacted incorrectly.
1) The first thing that you should do when the computer freezes is wait. If the above person had simply waited a few minutes everything would have been OK. In the early days of computers, all we did was wait on our computers, but now computers are so fast that if a person has to wait a few seconds he thinks something is wrong. Before you do anything, wait five or ten minutes.
2) If after waiting, your computer is still running slowly, you should close down all of the programs that you are not using. A computer can only do so much at one time. Closing down programs that you are not using frees up resources so that your computer can run better.
3) Next, try pressing the three keys: Ctrl, Alt, Delete. This is often called the three finger salute. Only press them once and press them all at the same time, then wait. Eventually, the Windows Task Manager window will be displayed. This lists the applications and processes that are running. You can use this to close down more applications or processes that may be hogging resources. If you have viruses or spyware running in the background, they will usually be listed in the processes section and you can close them from there. Processes connected to running applications or Windows processes should not be closed down, but viruses and spyware should be closed.
When you close an application using End Task, it will inform the application and the application may respond with a message, like "Are you sure you want to quit". If you answer the message given by the application, End Task will quit closing it down, so if you want End Task to force close the application, do not answer the message given by the application. End Task will wait for ten seconds or so and then close the application.
4) Try closing Windows. Sometimes the only alternative to a frozen system is to restart Windows. Close Windows in the normal way.
5) It is dangerous to shut down the computer without first closing Windows, but if you can't get Windows to close, you may have to shut down your computer. This should only be done as a last resort. This can be done on most computers by holding the Power button in for five seconds.
Ray Geide
Author of Ray's Computer Tips and many top computer software
Super Win Software, Inc.
http://www.superwin.com
