It happens to all of us on occasion: the dreaded hung program. After spending the better part of an hour typing in a long text document or editing an important photo, the program window freezes and we get the infuriating “Not Responding” error message.
All of that hard work has been for naught, right? Well, maybe not… A nifty little Windows utility called Resource Monitor just might save the day.
But before I explain how to try freeing up your stuck programs, let me explain a little bit about why programs stop responding in the first place. Programs running under Microsoft Windows do not run in a vacuum. They typically interact with a number of Windows processes, and even other software programs.
If one of the processes or programs that the program you’re working with encounters a problem, it will often cause the program you’re working with to just sit and wait while it tries to finish the task at hand. The problem is the task at hand will sometimes never be completed, hence the stuck program.
The next time a program stops responding before you’ve had a chance to save your work, try this: [Read more…]
Has Microsoft finally learned the value of listening to their customers? It appears that they just might have. Losing sales and market share by the boatloads will usually spur some soul-searching.
Does it seem like it takes forever for your Start Menu to display after you click the Start Button? There are several things that affect the speed of your menus that are beyond your control, but there is one that you can control with a simple Registry hack.
Question from Joyce B.:
It’s been a long time coming, but Microsoft has announced that they will no longer support or release security updates for Windows XP after April 8, 2014, a move that will effectively kill off what has been arguably the most popular version of Windows ever released.