Your Laptop is Frozen, Now What?

Part of being the proud owner of a laptop is dealing with the crippling frustration of freezes or crashes at some point. You can do everything possible to keep your device well-maintained, but chances are you’ll experience a freeze up eventually. While this is certainly aggravating, it’s not a complete disaster, as Brian Westover explains in his article for PC Mag.

The first thing to do in the case of a freeze, besides refraining from physically throwing your computer, is to try to diagnose the problem. The diagnosis can change the needed course of action, so you’ll need to think about the problem before knowing how to solve it.

The vents may be clogged with dust, lint or pet fur. That causes overheating, which leads to a forced shutdown. The solution may be as simple as clearing outside obstructions, like blankets, that are covering the vents. If there’s an internal clog, a can of compressed air could clean it out, but you may have a hardware problem that will need a professional repair. Geek Rescue specializes in repairing your computer, whether it needs a thorough cleaning or a hardware fix or upgrade.

You may have insufficient RAM available, which causes anything from sluggish, slow performance to a crash. You can research your own memory problems using Task Manager, but Geek Rescue does the legwork for you and has the tools to fix the problem once it’s been diagnosed.

Another possibility for a computer freeze is software issues. That’s an all-encompassing term that covers virus and malware infections, software bugs, BIOS changes and more. To fix the problem, try using System Restore to return to your last, healthy saved state. Then run a virus scan and updates. Geek Rescue takes care of these steps for you to find and solve the problem. They’ll also help keep the problem, or similar problems, from happening again.

These are just a small sampling of the possible reasons for computer problems. Though they are some of the most common, there are hundreds to thousands of other reasons for freezes. Take your computer to one of Geek Rescue’s locations to get expert analysis and a quick, efficient and effective fix. Come see us or call us at 918-369-4335.