Recover From a Hang

This scenario is played out everyday across the world: you’re working, surfing the internet or writing an email and your computer locks up,?frozen.

This happens when the computer does not respond to the inputs, for instance when you are trying to move the mouse around to restart the system and nothing happens when you click on it. It is different from a crash, when the whole system shuts down. With hangs you have the ability to recover the by ending the task and restarting the program.

One main cause of hangs is called a deadlock, in which?one process may send a?signal to a second process then stop execution until it receives a response. If the second process is busy the signal will be forced to wait until the process can get to it. However, if the second process was busy sending a signal to the first process then both processes would wait forever for the other to respond to signals and never see the other?s signal.

Sometimes it is just one program that hangs, or it could be the whole screen, regardless there are ways to recover from it.

One of the first things you should try in attempting to recover from a lockup is ending the application which has caused the freeze. You can do this by using a native program called Task Manager. To bring the Task Manager up press CTRL then while holding CTRL,press and hold the ALT key, next reach over to the top right of your computer and press the?DEL key. Once you release the keys a window should open giving you a view of running applications.

This tool has saved many a file and application, as well as the whole computer, giving us the ability to recover from what seems like a random occurrence.

Assuming Task Manager will open, check the list of applications for any programs that say “Not Responding” under “Status”. If Internet Explorer or any other applications you had open read “Not Responding”, then you may Right-Click on them and select “End Task” from the menu. This should close the running application, if you are prompted to “End Now” or “Wait for it to respond” choose to “End Now”. By doing this you may lose any work you had open in this application but it will normally allow you to save anything else that was open at the time of the freeze.

If Task Manager is not working for you and you have no other way of closing the frozen computer programs then you may try powering down the computer. The easiest way to do this when the computer is not responding is by holding the power button in for about ten to fifteen seconds. The machine will power down, if it does not your last resort is to physically unplug the computer from the wall. Once powered down you may turn it back on and resume working, hopefully problem free.

If you continue having problems with the laptop or computer you may want to call a computer repair technician. The technicians at Computer Geeks know how to get in and get out leaving your computer feeling healthy again!

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