TROUBLESHOOT FREEZES

There you are, clicking or typing away and things suddenly grind to a halt, the screen loses focus and the dreaded “not responding” message appears.

Step one is to be patient: if you have lots of programs running, then Windows can get in a temporary jam while it attempts to juggle resources. After a short period, things free themselves, at which point, you can save your file and continue.

But sometimes, the freeze doesn’t end. If Windows hasn’t already invited you to either close or restart the program, then try clicking its red close button once or twice. Again, be patient, but if nothing happens, try pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del and wait for the screen to blank before selecting Task Manager from the list of options.

When Task Manager appears, click More Details, if it’s visible. Any non-responsive program should be highlighted— from here, you can attempt to close it by selecting the process and clicking the ‘End task’ button or, if you’d like to try and recover it, right-click it and choose ‘Go to details’.

This will take you to the Details tab, where processes are listed with more information on their status (running or suspended), the user who launched them (typically you, SYSTEM, or a SERVICE), and a PID (Process ID).

Right-click the nonresponding thread and choose ‘Analyze wait chain’. This will list any threads that are using or waiting to use resources being used elsewhere, which can result in the program freezing. Clicking End Process here may be enough to free the program without crashing it, but be prepared for the entire program to close.

Sometimes Task Manager appears to have no effect. In these circumstances, you may be forced into a reboot. Before doing so, attempt to close all other programs and processes (including those running in the Taskbar Notification area) by normal means to minimize the damage and improve your chances of avoiding bigger problems.