Tip #26

Safe Shutdowns

It never fails, just at the most inopportune time, your computer locks up. It stops responding to your actions and you're stuck (i.e., clicking a button yields no response, your mouse pointer won't move, or a program stubbornly refuses to close), you can't do a thing. You sigh (suppressing a scream) and reach for the reset button. Hold it! Suppress that impulse!

It is extremely hard on your Windows system to have alot of incomplete shutdowns and abrupt boots. Windows installation depends in part on clean shutdowns (where you choose Start, Shutdown, Shutdown -- and wait for the "It's now safe to turn off your computer" message) at the end of each Windows session. Too many incomplete shutdowns can damage system files and affect the performance of Windows (never in a good way).

If your system does lock up, try this instead: press Ctrl+Alt+Del. The Close Program dialog box opens, listing all of the programs running on your PC at the moment. Look for the program with "(not responding)" at the end of its listing. Select it and click End Task. If it can, Windows will close this wayward program. This should then free up the computer so that you can save the work in your other programs. You can then do a proper shutdown or reboot.