Computer Freezing – Fix It Fast

If your computer freezes up on you, it could be due to a number of causes. This disruptive activity can be cured and your computer brought back to normal with the right approach.  I wrote an article about this which was published in EzineArticles. The article with some enhancements follows.

There is almost nothing as frustrating as a computer freezing up on you. This can be especially disturbing if it happens in the middle of something important like writing an important document, doing your taxes or in the heat of a computer game. As the medicine commercial goes, you need relief and fast.

Causes of Freezing

There can be many causes of freezing up. The most common ones are:

• computer overheating
• viruses or trojans
• registry problems
• Windows corruption
• video driver problems

Other causes include:

• a faulty program
• flaky RAM
• hard disk going bad

Repair Steps

1. The rule in computer problems generally is that the latest change caused the problem. If you recently installed some new software or hardware, uninstall it and see if the problem goes away. If it does, then the new thing is the cause. Check on the Internet for any known problems with these things or contact the vendors for repair suggestions.

If this doesn’t apply, Windows keeps track of errors in the event viewer. Click start->run, type eventvwr.msc and enter. Click on system and look for any error reports in the right column. If there is a link in the error report, click on it to get the details. The link will often provide you with a possible solution.

Do the same for application and the other choices on the left hand side until you find something that applies to your problem.

If you’ve found the cause of your error, follow the suggested steps to correct the problem.

2. Computer overheating – Check to make sure your fan is not being blocked. It would also pay to open your case and clean out any accumulated dust or junk.

If you open it, make sure to unplug it first. Additionally, you should touch the case to release any static electricity before touching anything inside the computer.

3. Viruses or Trojans – Make sure that you have quality Internet security software such as Norton 360 v3.0.  Click the banner below and use the coupon code to get 10% off. Download and run Malwarebytes to get rid of any malware that you might have. To find the best Internet Security solution that will deal with all security issues see Best Internet Security Software

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4. Registry Problems – Use a high quality registry cleaner to correct these problems. I have found JV 16 utilities to have one of the best and safest registry repair utilities.

5. Video driver problems – update your driver to the latest version going to the device manager and getting the latest version.

6. Windows corruption – If your Windows operating system has gone bad, you need to repair it. The type of repair that you can do depends on your operating system version Windows 2000, XP or Vista.

For XP you have a couple of special options.  In general you want to do a repair install and NOT use the repair console.

Detailed instructions for a repair install are  provided by Michael Stevens Tech

If you can no longer do a repair install, DO NOT reformat and reinstall as this will wipe you out and leave you with nothing but the operating system. You would have to reinstall all your programs and much of your data would be inaccessible.

Reimage can repair your system even if a repair install fails. It costs a little but it is well worth it to save your data. It takes about 30 minutes and preserves your programs and data. If you are not happy with the results, you don’t have to pay and you can reverse any changes that it made. Find out more in my Reimage Repair article.

7. Other causes – The causes above are the most common ones.

If you always have the problem with a particular program, contact the vendor. You can easily find their support by Googling <program vendor>  support contact.

RAM problems can be checked out by using free memory diagnostic programs.

If you suspect that your hard disk is going bad, do the following Click Start –> My Computer. Right click on the disk you want to check (usually C: ). Select Properties. Click on the Tools tab. Under Error Checking, click Check Now. Select the Automatically Fix File System Errors option, and the Scan For and Attempt Recovery of Bad Sectors option. Click on Start.

Summary

By following the steps above, you can cure your computer if the computer freezing problems that you have been experiencing.

Enjoy freeze free computing.