Tips from
the Techie
Timely
how-to advice for keeping your systems running
John AndersEn
Owner, John AndersEn & Co
LLC
Why Does My Computer Lock
Up?
We've all been
there, you're working along on your computer when WHAMMO,
something happens and it stops responding to you. Your
only option appears to be to turn it off and on again and lose
any work you did that wasn't saved. Not a lot of
fun. So why does this happen and what can you do to
prevent it from occurring again? Consider the following
information.
|
| Computers are glorified
idiots! |
|
1. Remember what you are
dealing with. The computer is nothing more than a
glorified idiot, or basically a turbo-charged
calculator. Recall that it is easy to force a
hand-calculator into “error mode” (i.e. that little
“E”). In like fashion, sometimes your computer can be
asked to do too much.
2. Attempt a graceful
exit. Most versions of Microsoft Windows these days have
what's called a “task list” available by pressing the three
keys “Ctrl-Alt-Delete” at the same time. This will bring
up a list of all the programs running at the same time and
will provide a way to just exit out of the problem
program. This won't save any work you did in that
program, but may give you an opportunity to save work in other
programs before you restart your computer.
3. Try to stay current with
upgrade versions available for programs that frequently give
you trouble. Quite often common problems can be easily
fixed this way. For example, consider upgrading your
computer to the Windows 2000 operating system which does
a much better job in handling this type of
problem. |