The common thing that most computer users end up doing when their computer freezes up on them is usually a show of temper of some sort, be it banging their hands on their desks in frustration or restraining the urge to hit any nearby computer peripherals (the usual ‘victim' being the screen). Some might even hit the CPU case thinking that doing so might help get the computer working again.



What everyone needs to remember is that the computer is not a sentient living being with a mind of its own, which fears reprimand every time it acts up. Abusing the computer physically (or even verbally) will not help at all. If you have ever found yourself asking the question “What do I do if my computer keeps freezing” then this article will answer that question for you.

The fact is, freezing computers are a common phenomenon, and for those with relatively outdated systems it has become almost an inevitable expectation of sorts. Common symptoms include a frozen cursor and the inability to launch any program, and your desktop would for all intents and purposes be frozen in a sort of suspended animation. This is usually followed by beeping noises coming from the CPU when you try and tap the keys of your keyboard, indicating that all signals to the motherboard and back have been blocked.

At this point most people might be looking at the reset or power button in fear, especially if they have not had the chance to save their work prior. Let's face it, by now there is pretty much nothing you can do but hope that the auto-save feature kicked in before your computer froze.

What needs to be done is to ensure that the computer does not freeze in the first place, and in order to avoid this inconvenience from ever occurring again, we need to look into the various reasons why it does so. One of the common reasons happens to be a lack of memory, and to put it simply, with insufficient memory the computer becomes stressed at having to handle memory intensive programs that it simply gives up and stops functioning.

If you're running memory intensive programs be sure you're not running them simultaneously. Run them one at a time to avoid overwhelming your computer's limited memory resources. If you absolutely need to run multiple memory intensive programs then perhaps you should look into upgrading your memory. Buy additional sticks of RAM, which are relatively cheap these days, and boost the memory of your system.

Also, another possible reason for system freezes could be bad code in programs, especially games and high-end software, which can lock up your computer when Windows cannot execute the code written in them. Always check the integrity of the programs that you are going to install and check for any possible conflict issues with other software or even hardware. Hardware conflicts are pretty common as well, so make sure you have those sorted out before buying anything new and expensive.

There may also be a conflict in the registry between local keys and null values, which means that the OS will lock up whenever you try to launch a program. One of the best ways to fix these conflicts and even clean up and speed up your PC is to get a registry or PC cleaner, which can solve most software based problems and clean out the junk in your system folders which can lead to memory overload and the infamous computer freeze. A good registry cleaner has been the saviour of many computers and yours should be no exception.