Use This Hidden Keyboard Combo to Fix Your Frozen Computer

Having your PC suddenly freeze in the middle of working is frustrating. Windows can become unresponsive for many reasons, but there’s a little-known shortcut that can help you recover from one common cause.

We’ll introduce a new handy keyboard shortcut you probably don’t know about, then discuss a few more quick tips for getting your frozen computer running again.

The Hidden Keyboard Combo for Fixing Freezes

Windows offers a standard shortcut that will restart your video drivers. You can use it anytime by pressing the key combination Win + Ctrl + Shift + B.

Once you do so, you’ll see your screen go black for a moment and hear a beep while the video driver resets. After a second or two, your display will return. Since this only affects your graphics drivers, all your open apps remain exactly where you left them. You won’t lose any work.

This only works on Windows 8 or 10, so Windows 7 users can’t take advantage of it. However, it will work no matter what kind of graphics drivers you have. Nvidia, AMD, and even Intel integrated graphics will all reset just fine.

Other Troubleshooting Tips for Frozen Apps

Depending on the cause of the freeze, this shortcut may or may not fix your issue. If your graphics driver gets stuck, restarting it should let you continue on without having to restart your computer.

But if this doesn’t work, you should try pressing Alt + Tab to switch to another program. Still stuck? Try Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager so you can kill any unresponsive programs.

Should neither of these work, give Ctrl + Alt + Del a press. If Windows doesn’t respond to this after some time, you’ll need to hard shutdown your computer by holding the Power button for several seconds. This is akin to pulling the plug, and is the only way to escape a system freeze.

Check out our guide to Windows 10 freezes if you experience this problem regularly.



Powered by Blogger.