It’s happened to us all before. Right when were in the middle of doing a mission critical task on the computer, it decides that it is going to freeze up and not allow you to do anything but hold in the power button and turn it off. If you’re lucky, there may have been an auto-save feature in whatever you were working on, but more likely than not you just lost all of your hard work and have to start back at square one. If proper up-keep on a computer is not done, then there is not much you can do to stop computer freezing.
It is estimated that Windows Vista has over 40 million lines of code. That is almost impossible to wrap your brain around. This statistic alone opens the door for causing there to be a glitch here and there when using a program that is so extensive and complex. This doesn’t take into account any 3rd party software or hardware that can also contribute to a computer freezing up.
So what can you do if your computer is freezing up randomly or what can you do to make sure that it doesn’t eventually start freezing?
You need to understand that every time you turn your computer on, install a program or browse the internet that data is being written to your hard drive and system registry that will either never be used or is not needed for your computer to operate properly. This is a large part one of the biggest contributors to having yourself a slow computer.
Run Disk Cleanup: This option is largely overlooked, but if done on a regular basis, can be very helpful to your computer. The Disk Cleanup tool is built into windows and can usually be found here:
- Start Menu
- All Programs
- Accessories
- System Tools
I would recommend running this utility about once a month. No need to run it every day or even every week. It will go through and compress old files, delete temporary files and basically clean up any junk files that are no longer needed.
Use Disk Defragmenter: I usually consider this tool a bit overrated, but I would recommend using it once every 3 months. When a file is written to your hard drive, portions of that file may be written to several different locations on your hard drive. The disk defragmenter attempts to re-organize your hard drive and put the different file locations close together. This will help speed up your computer. Let’s be honest though, it probably won’t actually be noticeable.
Clean Your Registry: The computer registry is the equivalent of what the brain is to a human. The registry is where the most important information for your computer is held. The one problem with this, is that the computer registry can become large and filled with entries that are useless or no longer needed. Every time you install a program, run a windows update, or install the latest plugin for your internet browser, an entry is written to the registry. Get yourself a highly reliable registry cleaner such as Registry Easy and let it maintain the up-keep on your computer registry. This will help tremendously with the overall long-term health of your computer.
I hope these were some helpful tips that should and will stop computer freezing.