Why does the laptop freeze? Outdated or missing drivers

Like any other device, a laptop can freeze. This may happen due to a software or hardware failure. If the problem is software, then most often it can be solved by closing the program that is causing the freeze. But, to solve serious problems with programs and hardware failures, you need to use a forced reboot. In this article we will talk about what to do if the laptop freezes and does not respond to anything.

Software solution to problems on a frozen laptop

If your laptop is frozen, then you should first try to solve the problem without rebooting. After all, a forced reboot is extra stress for a hard drive, whose lifespan is not very long anyway. In addition, a reboot can lead to the loss of data that was in programs and was not saved.

In order to solve the problem with your laptop freezing, you will need the “Task Manager”. This is a utility built into Windows that allows you to manage running processes, services and programs. Using the task manager, you can detect the program that is causing your laptop to freeze and stop it from running. In most cases, this is enough to restore the computer.

You can open "" in different ways. For example, you can press the key combination CTRL-ALT-DELETE and select “Task Manager” using the mouse. But, if the laptop is seriously frozen, then this may not work. Therefore, it is better to use the key combination CTRL-SHIFT-ESC. This combination immediately opens the Task Manager, without any intermediate windows.

In the Task Manager window, you need to go to the “Processes” tab (or to the “Applications” tab if you are using Windows 7). Here you need to find the program whose status is indicated as “Not responding”.

In addition, a frozen program can be determined by the load on the processor and the amount of RAM used. Most often, such a program creates the most load and takes up the most memory.

After you have found the program that has frozen, right-click on it and select the “End task” option. This should stop the program and resolve the freezing issue.

If this doesn’t work, you can try right-clicking on the program and selecting “Details” (or “Go to process” if you have Windows 7).

After this, you will go to the Details tab (or Processes if you have Windows 7). Here you can use the “End process tree” function. Often this function allows you to close a frozen program even in cases where “End task” does not work.

But, in some cases, the laptop freezes so seriously that it is impossible to solve the problem using the task manager. It's not uncommon for it to not open at all. In such cases, the only way to solve the freezing problem is to force a reboot.

If your laptop is frozen and does not respond to anything, then you can always solve the problem using a forced one. Most laptops do not have a reset button like desktops, so rebooting is done using the power button.

Press the power button on the laptop and hold it until the laptop turns off. Typically this requires holding the button for about 5 seconds. This shutdown method is implemented at the hardware level, so it is triggered during any freeze. After shutting down, simply turn on the laptop and it will start working normally.

By the way, long pressing the power button also works on other devices. For example, this way you can turn off a frozen desktop computer or Android mobile phone.

In addition, if your laptop uses a removable battery, you can turn it off by simply unplugging it and removing the battery. To do this, turn the laptop upside down and release the latches that hold the battery. After this, you can remove the battery and thereby turn off the frozen laptop.

It should be noted that removing the battery is a riskier shutdown method. Therefore, it is better to use a long press on the power button.

Every user needs to know how to restart a laptop. After all, this procedure is often required when installing any software, drivers and new software. In addition, in some cases, only a reboot helps to cope with various types of system freezes and return the device to functionality. Therefore, we will look at various ways to restart a laptop.

Probably the simplest and at the same time the most common way to restart a laptop involves accessing the “start” menu. Here, as you know, there are several buttons that allow you to turn off the device, put it into sleep mode, and, of course, reboot. Using the "start" menu, you can restart any laptop, regardless of its manufacturer - Asus, Toshiba, HP, Lenovo, Acer, Samsung, etc.

However, each operating system has a slightly different reboot procedure:

For windows 7 :

1. Use your touchpad or mouse to launch the start menu in the lower left corner.
2. Click on the arrow that is located to the left of the “Shutdown” inscription. This will open an additional menu.
3. Select the “reboot” command line and click on it. The Windows 7 laptop should now reboot.

For w Windows 8 everything is different, because the interface of this OS does not have the usual “start” menu:

1. First of all, quickly move the mouse cursor along the right side of the screen from top to bottom. A vertical menu should pop up. It just provides access to the main functions.
2. Move the cursor to the “parameters” button, which is made in the form of a gear. We click on it.
3. Then we activate the “shutdown” line.
4. Select "reboot".

For laptop with windows 10 The restart procedure includes the following steps:

1. Find the start menu icon in the lower left corner and click on it.
2. A panel will appear on which you need to select the “shutdown” line.
3. Now in the pop-up menu, click on the “reboot” button.

Typically, the procedure for rebooting a laptop with any OS takes 50-60 seconds at most. But sometimes it may take more time if the list of automatically launched programs includes “heavy” applications.

Naturally, you can force restart the laptop by holding down the power button. However, this option for restarting the device should be used only in extreme cases. After all, here the laptop will simply turn off, and by pressing the power button again you will turn it on. Moreover, all this represents an incorrect shutdown, the consequences of which can be various serious system errors.

Moreover, it is not recommended to turn off the laptop from the network or pull out the battery to reboot. Such an action could come back to haunt even more global problems. For example, failure of the power supply or hard drive, as well as a number of controllers on the motherboard.

A mouse is not always required to reboot the device. You can limit yourself to the capabilities of the keyboard. Indeed, sometimes due to various software glitches or technical problems, a laptop’s touchpad or mouse may stop working.

To reboot using the keyboard you need to:

1. First of all, press the win key. It is located in the lower left part of the keyboard between ctrl and alt.
2. Then use the up-down-right-left arrows to select the shutdown or reboot line. Press "enter".
3. However, often some errors make it impossible to open the Start menu. There is only one way out - start the task manager.
4. This is done by pressing ctrl+alt+delete. Or another combination – ctrl + shift + e
5. Depending on the OS, a window or a whole menu will open where you can select the option to restart the laptop. For example, in Windows 7 it will be located in the lower right corner (red icon).
6. Press the alt key and use the arrow keys to select the required reboot command. Don't forget to enter.

By the way, many users who want to reboot an asus laptop encounter the following problem. Sometimes both the touchpad and the mouse do not work. The thing is that you can accidentally press the Fn+F7 button combination. As a result, only push-button control of the laptop is left. It is in situations like these that knowledge of how to restart a computer using just the keyboard is useful.

How to restart a frozen laptop?

It also happens that the laptop does not respond to any user commands. The reasons for such a freeze are various - errors in the system, heavy programs and applications that heavily load the processor, problems with the “stuffing” (motherboard, video card, processor, etc.).

What to do in this case? Of course, you need to restart the laptop. But how? After all, neither the mouse nor the touchpad respond, and you don’t want to resort to incorrect shutdown of the device. Then we recommend restarting the laptop using the keyboard. We wrote above about some popular methods of such a restart. If they don't help, then try the following:

1. Use the command line. To do this, press Win+R. A window will open where you need to enter shutdown /r (or shutdown -t 0 -r -f) and press e This command means to immediately restart the laptop.
2. For devices with Windows 10, there is another opportunity to reboot a frozen laptop without a mouse or touchpad. You need to press the win+x keys on your keyboard. As a result, a large menu will open where you can select the “reboot” line.
3. The combination of alt + f buttons can also help to restart a frozen laptop in safe mode. Press and all active windows will immediately close. Moreover, pressing the alt + f4 keys again can close the window with the OS. Thus, ensuring the laptop reboots.
4. For users who have Windows 8 (or 8.1) installed on their laptop, the system can be restarted using the win+c command.

Any problem with a laptop, whether it freezes, runs slowly, reboots on its own, or something else, is always a hardware or software problem.

The hardware part is the hardware, the filling of the laptop, the motherboard, hard drive, RAM, etc. The software part includes the operating system, all programs and files on the laptop.

Therefore, when problems arise, first of all, you need to find out the reason for the laptop freezing, that is, find out in which part the problem itself is located - in software or hardware. To do this, you don’t need much knowledge of electronics, you don’t even need to disassemble and look for what could have broken there. Because for a long time there have been special programs - utilities that allow you to check the condition of your laptop’s hardware using testing. And this is possible even in cases when your laptop does not boot completely, but freezes when loading. They do not require installation, are distributed free of charge, and can be loaded from a USB flash drive or CD.

There are cases where a laptop begins to freeze due to simple overheating; the radiator through which air flows to cool the laptop becomes clogged with dust, wool and cannot cool well enough. The utility will also show you the processor temperature and inform you that it is critical.

For example, consider a couple of testing programs

There are 2 versions of the program: commercial and free, we will consider the free one.
The main features of this program are to check the surface of the hard drive for bad sectors and check the writing/reading speed of the hard drive. You can determine whether the disk head is positioned correctly. Allows you to set or remove a password on your hard drive. If bad sectors are detected, you can do a remap; this is hiding these sectors; they are transferred to an area on the hard drive specially designated for this purpose. This operation is temporary and allows you to restore the functionality of the hard drive for an indefinite period of time. But in any case, the hard drive will soon require replacement.

This is a program for testing temperature, stability and power supply of processor elements, RAM, motherboard and hard drive. The utility was developed by Russian programmers and allows you to observe what problems occur in the laptop components under load; you can adjust the degree of load on the system to 50, 75 or 100 percent. From this test you can find out what loads your system can withstand, what temperature conditions it can withstand. Allows you to test both individual elements and all at once. The advantage of this utility is that it not only finds the presence of a problem, but also determines its source.

Basically, such diagnostics take from 2-3 hours to several days, depending on the complexity. You should not stop diagnostics until all tests are passed, even if the problem is found. There are cases when a laptop has several problems at once, and as a result, if all the tests are not passed, the device may continue to freeze and slow down.

The following problems may occur in the laptop software:

1. Computer viruses- These are malicious programs specially created to ruin the operation of your system. They can slow down your laptop, block access to files, delete them, and even send them to others. They are even capable of completely blocking the operation of the system and performing various fraudulent manipulations, for example, demanding to send an SMS to pay for unlocking the system with threats of complete destruction of all data. There are a huge number of different viruses. To find and destroy them, there are special programs - antiviruses.

2. Operating system errors- this is a consequence of the “incorrect” use of the system. They appear when there are a large number of unnecessary programs installed, or when old programs are removed incorrectly. If there are many programs on the computer that are in startup mode, i.e. they are loaded together with the startup of the laptop system, this also very often slows down its operation. Recently, quite often, when downloading and installing programs, games and other applications, along with the program that needs to be installed, in addition, various browsers, antiviruses, search engines, etc. are also installed. Which the user initially did not need, as a result, a lot of unnecessary rubbish accumulates in the system. But even if you don’t download or install anything, but just read news on the Internet, view pages or videos online, the system will still become clogged, because when viewing pages on the Internet, they are loaded into a special area - the cache. This is a temporary file storage in which the data you viewed on the Internet remains. And these storages also require cleaning from time to time. There are also special programs to correct all these errors and remove “garbage”.

Based on the testing results, it will be possible to decide what to do next with the laptop, change any hardware part, or look for a problem in the software part - treat it with an antivirus, clean the system of “garbage”, fix the boot sector, etc.
We will learn all this in more detail and much more in the following articles.

If your laptop freezes, then the cause of this problem may be a number of factors. Usually it is possible to fix the problem at home, but in order for the laptop to work without failures, you first need to find the cause of the breakdown.

Causes of the problem

Possible reasons for a laptop freezing can be divided into two categories:

• Hardware – problems with hardware, for example, overheating of components.
• Software – errors in Windows operation, virus infection, etc.

If the device freezes when loading Windows, then it is most likely a hardware failure. If the system starts up and works for some time, then you need to pay attention to the state of the operating system, although there may be exceptions, which are described below.

Stuck when turning on and off

If the laptop freezes when turned on, then you should look for the cause primarily in the physical condition of the components. What problems lead to this situation:

• Problems with RAM sticks - it is unlikely that you will be able to fix them yourself; you will need to disassemble the laptop.
• Hard drive malfunctions - you can check the status of the drive using a bootable USB flash drive with the Victoria program.
• Laptop contamination and components overheating.

If the laptop slows down at the system boot stage, but before that it turns on normally, then try starting Windows in safe mode. On Windows 7, you can select safe mode through the menu, which is called up by pressing the F8 key when you turn on the computer. If the system boots in safe mode, then you need to clean the startup list - one or more programs are slowing down Windows startup in normal mode.

On Windows 8 and Windows 10, the F8 key does not work, so you will have to wait until the system starts. To clear startup:

If Windows boots normally without startup programs, then simply do not allow applications to load with the system. Open the startup list again and mark only those programs that are vital - antivirus, applications for managing the video card. All other applications can be launched manually.

Another unpleasant situation is that the laptop works fine, but when it finishes working it starts to slow down terribly and doesn’t turn off for a long time. This is usually caused by a program or process that the system cannot terminate. When Windows 10 shuts down, a message box always appears telling you which apps are still running. You can go back to the system, launch the task manager, and kill stubborn processes manually.

At the same time, check the system with an antivirus - there may be processes that prevent the computer from shutting down normally and are also harming the system in some other way.

Freezing during operation

If the laptop freezes a few minutes after turning it on, then try to detect some systematicity in the occurrence of problems. For example, Windows hangs after launching a game or program - this means that the problem is in the software that you are trying to launch. Reinstall it or uninstall it since the laptop cannot work with it.

Another reason could be incompatible drivers. If the problem occurs after connecting new hardware and installing software, then you should stop using this hardware or look for other drivers. If, for example, a mouse or other equipment freezes, and not the entire system, then you should also pay attention to the drivers and the physical state of the device.

There are no such obvious indicators - you will have to do a little independent diagnostics of the laptop. If you are wondering how to reboot your machine to begin diagnostics, the answer depends on whether the laptop is responsive to your requests. If you can open the Start menu and click Restart, then use this restart method.

Is your laptop frozen and not responding at all? Then you will need knowledge on how to turn off a frozen device. Press and hold the power button until the screen goes dark. If this does not help, then unplug the laptop and remove the battery from it - this is a last resort.

After turning it on, first check your laptop using an antivirus. Use not only the installed anti-virus software, but also the free Dr.Web CureIT utility, downloaded from the developer’s official website. By the way, if you install a modern, powerful antivirus on an old laptop, it will also slow down mercilessly due to lack of resources.

A full hard drive can also cause the system to slow down or freeze. Open "Computer" and see how much space is left on the system partition. If the bar turns red, then you have dangerously full the disk. Try cleaning it of unnecessary files and programs. Also, remove temporary data:

Unfortunately, sometimes the cause of a laptop freezing is not only such a trifle as temporary files. The reasons may also be hardware in nature. If your laptop turns on and runs for a bit, then freezes and won't turn on again, and then after a while it turns on again and runs for a while, then you are definitely dealing with overheating components. To eliminate this drawback, you need to disassemble the laptop, clean it of dust and check the cooling system.

Problems may arise in the operation of the hard drive, motherboard, or RAM. You can independently check the temperature of components using programs like Speccy or run RAM and hard drive tests in MemTest and Victoria. But in such cases it is difficult to diagnose the problem on your own, so it is better to contact a service center to avoid even more serious problems.