How to survive computer freezes?

A computer as of yet is not as consistently reliable as a refrigerator or television. A computer often waits and will misbehave on occasion. Many people have often said their computer has crashed, it’s frozen, or it just hung up. No matter what you refer to it as, there is never a good time for a computer to improperly act. This is however, a normal part of computing in today’s world.

Your may or may not be aware of what caused the problem. In the end however, it’s the way that you handle the problem that will make all the difference.

The first thing to do is to be patient. If your computer fails to respond to your keystrokes, it may be having a problem. The computer could however, be busy performing some function that you may not be aware of. For example, your computer may seem to stop when automatically saving a file or when printing something in the background.

Give it a minute or two. If it still fails to respond, look for the obvious problems first. It may sound simplistic, but in some cases the problem is easily found. If your screen went blank, check the power cable. Also check to make sure that the power in the house hasn’t went off. Many newer computers have a suspend feature that blanks out the screen in order to save electricity. Try pressing a few keys to see if the computer will come back to life on its own.

If your screen remains on, but your mouse clicks and keystrokes don’t get any type of response, try a couple of easy checks first. Make sure that everything is connected. With many programs, the Escape key will take you back one step. Always try hitting the Escape key a few times before you decide that the computer is truly locked. If you still don’t get a response, it’s time to go to the next step.

The next step is the combination of the magic keys. Find the keys that are marked Ctrl, Alt and Del. Press these three keys at the same time. This combination of keys is remnant of the DOS days of computing. With DOS, pressing these key caused the computer to restart. The Windows operating platform uses these three keys in a similar yet slightly different way.

If your using Windows 95, 98, or ME, you will be presented with a Close Programs box that shows you a list of the programs that are currently running after you press these three magic keys. If Windows finds the offending program, it will list the words “not responding” next to the name of the program. You can then highlight the name of the program, press End Task, and then return to your task at hand.

Windows XP on the other hand, handle the Ctrl Alt Del combination a little differently. Pressing these keys in XP will bring up a Windows Task Manager screen. Click the Applications tab and you will see the list of currently running programs. Most users will not have to be concerned with the information on the other tabs on this screen. XP doesn’t freeze up as much as the other previous versions of Windows.

In some cases, even the Close Programs Box or Task Manager freezes or doesn’t seem to work. If this happens, you should restart your computer. If your computer has a restart button you can press it. If you don’t have this button, you should turn the power off. Wait a few minutes to let the hard drive and other components come to a complete stop before restarting the computer.