Hi everybody. There comes a time when every computer will lock and freeze as you open a program, read your e-mail or while browsing the web. If this is only an occasional instance, you probably have nothing to worry about but if it happens all the time your system probably needs a tune up. Regardless of the reason, you need to know what to do when this happens and the best way to rescue yourself from this annoying Dilemma. This will be the discussion in today’s column.
Lets say you are using Internet Explorer and you open a website and suddenly, the entire computer stops responding. You might just see the hourglass or circle showing activity but the system will not allow you to do any normal operations. The system will not even let you use the shutdown command in order to reboot the computer. The one thing you absolutely do not want to do in this case is unplug the computer to shut it down. The proper way to get you out of this type of situation is to do what we call a hard shutdown. Simply push and hold the power button of your computer for about 10 – 15 seconds and the system should turn off. When you restart your system, the offending program causing the freeze in the first place should be refreshed and everything should work normally. The danger in using the unplug method is that your hard drive or even your motherboard could get damaged from the sudden loss of power.
Sometimes the computer freeze will not be as bad as the scenario above. You might have only one program that is not responding but the rest of the computer is working fine. In this case the use of the task manager will be in order. You can either use the three finger salute of Ctrl – Alt – Delete or you can go down to your task bar and Right Click on an empty part of the bar. This will bring up a context menu. Simply click the task manager option and this should allow the task manager to run. If you are using Windows Vista or 7, a second dialog will open and you will have to click on Start Task Manager. Once the task manager is open, go to the Applications tab. Here you should see the offending program or window in the list. Simply highlight the program you want to kill and then click End Task. The program should then close. For more stubborn programs, you might have to go to the Processes Tab and locate the programs process and click End Process at the bottom of the window.
In short, for most normal everyday freeze ups, the above methods should work just fine. If the problem is persistent, you might have a virus or other serious operating system issue.
Author: Joe Zelenak, Staff Writer
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