Windows 8 Bible

Not Responding? Task Manager to the Rescue

One of Task Manager’s most useful roles is that of dealing with problems that cause programs, or your whole computer, to hang (to “freeze up,” so that the mouse and keyboard don’t work normally). Even when you can’t get the mouse or keyboard to work, pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del and choosing Start Task Manager may get Task Manager open for you.

Closing frozen programs

Once Task Manager is open, click the Details tab, as shown in Figure 42.5. If a particular program is hung, its Status column usually reads Not Responding rather than Running. To close the hung program, click its name in the Name column, and then click the End Task button, which appears at the bottom right of the window. Task Manager tries to close the program normally, so that if you were working on a document at the time, you may be able to save any changes. (So don’t expect the program to close immediately.)

FIGURE 42.5 Task Manager’s Details tab

If the program won’t close, you’ll see a warning that moving ahead will close the program and leave unsaved work behind. To forge ahead, click End Process. The program may try to restart itself, depending on how it is designed.

Most likely, a process of reporting the problem and finding a solution will start after you end a program in this way. If you choose to allow Windows to send information about the program error, Windows sends ...