Stopping a stuck program

- [Instructor] The program is stuck, it's not responding. The problem is common and it exists to various degrees. The solution depends on the degree to which the program is stuck. First, wait, the program could be busy. So give it a break. How long should you wait? Well, I'd say about five minutes. This advice depends on whether you can otherwise still use the computer. If the mouse moves and other programs work, wait, if everything is stuck, you can try the next step. These are obvious examples. What can affect your PC's performance is when a program gets stuck, that you're unaware of. The stuck program continues to occupy memory and it may hinder CPU performance as well. There's nothing you can do with a program that becomes chronically stuck other than not use the program again, consider contacting the developer or searching their support website to see if a work-around is available or another solution presents itself such as an update or a newer release of the problem program. Press Control + Shift + Escape to bring up the Task Manager Window, choose a program that's stuck from the list and then click the end task button. Hopefully this cures the problem, the program terminates. If not or if you're using a full screen programs such as a game and it seizes, you can press Control + Alt + Delete to display this screen. Here you see five items, lock, switch user, sign out, change a password, task manager and cancel, choose task manager from the list to bring up the Task Manager Window. Now, you're switched away from the stuck program say a full screen game or something and you can end that program from the Task Manager Window as shown earlier. In the Task Manager Window, ensure that the more details option is selected and that the Window looks like this. The view now shows program details which you can expand, but also background processes. It's difficult to determine whether one of these processes is stuck. So if performance is lagging and you suspect something, what you can do is try to shut down or restart the computer. From the start menu, I'm going to choose power and then restart. If a program is stuck, you'll see it appear in a list when the computer attempts to restart, shown here is Notepad which has an unsaved file in it. Now, this problem may not be intentional if so, cancel and save the document. Otherwise, what you may see here is the stuck program. In which case you can click restart anyway to terminate the program and restart the computer.