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My 3 Worst Computer Nightmares. What Are Yours?

Yaara Lancet — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:00:32 +0000

Let’s face it. Even for the geekiest computer lovers among us, computers can sometimes turn into a nightmare. Regardless of what your personal nightmares are, we have all faced moments in which we had to restrain ourselves from throwing the darn thing out the window or hold our breath in hope that the latest random trick is fixable.

Some would say this only happens to Windows/Mac/Linux/Laptop/Whatever users; some will say these things only happen to people who don’t actually know how to use computers (until it happens to them, too). Don’t get me wrong, I love computers – they play a huge part in my everyday life and I cannot do without them. But we all have our own personal computer nightmares. These are mine. What are yours?

Broken Laptop Keyboard

This is one of the most annoying things I ever had to face as a laptop user. As long as you use a desktop computer with a standalone keyboard, a broken key is a mere annoyance. But when your laptop’s keyboard breaks, it’s elevated into a true nightmare status.

The image above may be extreme, but I definitely felt the urge to do just that on the several occasions I had to deal with a broken laptop keyboard. I don’t know about your laptop, but my keyboard breaks extremely easily. I can’t take the keys out to clean or do other maintenance without breaking at least one key. Sometimes, I come home to find one of the keys lying loose on the keyboard. Why? Just because!

Even when not broken, putting a loose key back in place is comparable to rocket science, and sometimes it pops out again again every time I brush my finger next to it while typing. Did you know that some laptop keys have a complex plastic mechanism underneath, with microscopic pins and clips that break and bend when you breath on them? And did you know that every laptop, even similar models from the same company, use different mechanisms for keys?

Once I took the bus halfway across town to try to track down a used keyboard which I could use for spare keys. It turned out to be from a slightly different model, and therefore used a totally different mechanism. True, you can find spare keys online, and I already had to order some in the past, but does it really have to be this complex?

Adobe Flash Plug-in

This is a good one. Adobe Flash Plug-in. Do you shudder just reading the name? I do, sometimes.

Before I dive into the rant, I will say that I appreciate what Flash has done for technology, and I do believe it has some positive aspects to it, but in everyday life, Adobe Flash browser plug-in can single handedly ruin my browsing sessions, my entire day and my sanity.

The all too familiar screenshot above is the least of it. When the Flash browser plug-in crashes, I actually know where I stand. It’s when pages take ages to load, or simply get stuck, all because of some small Flash element in an ad which you are not even aware of – this is when it gets dirty.

Lately, following a friend’s advice, I blocked my browser’s Flash plug-in. When I want to use Flash, I enable it manually. You wouldn’t believe the difference this has made to my browsing experience. If you’re having similar experiences with Flash, I urge you to try it as well. This is one nightmare we can actually fight!

Windows Not Loading

I know Mac/Linux lovers will be all over me for this one. Some Windows fans might be too. But yes, this is one of my worst computer nightmares, although it has not come true in the past few years.

Let me start by saying that I grew up in a Mac house. I did not touch a non-Mac machine until Windows 95 was out (and we all remember what a fantastic OS that was…). It came as a complete surprise to me that the thing can decide not to load whenever it wants to. I remember the frustration of watching that “loading” screen, praying for it to go on and finish the loading process, only to have to give up and try to reboot – yet again.

This is something I went through again and again, until Windows 7 came out. Since then, this computer nightmare has not come true even once. But I still hold my breath for a few seconds every time I reboot my machine. Will it actually load again, or will it hang? I wonder how long it will take me to stop being slightly scared every single time I restart my computer and have to sit there watching that pretty “loading” animation. Maybe in Windows 2020.

Bottom Line

I have to stress again that I am not a negative person. We all have small things that drive us crazy, and these are just some of mine. After all, if we don’t talk about it, how will we ever be able to treat these lightly?

Now it’s your turn. What are your worst computer nightmares? Broken hardware? Bad software? Strangers playing with your setup? Share them all in the comments!

Image Credit: Shutterstock

The 3 Most Common Solutions To Fix A Windows Computer That Is Always Freezing Up

Tina Sieber — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 23:31:27 +0000

Does your computer freeze randomly? Do you face the Blue Screen Of Death almost every day? Don’t let your computer terrify you!

Take action, track down what causes your computer to lock up on you and how you can stop it from happening. We have previously introduced 7 Common Reasons Why Windows Can Get Unresponsive. This article examines how you can troubleshoot the causes for a freezing computer and what you can do to fix it.

If you’re struggling with a slow and unresponsive system, we will shortly be publishing a PDF manual called Windows on Speed which will help you learn what makes your system become sluggish and how you can regain a top Windows performance. Make sure you subscribe to MakeUseOf so you don’t miss the manual when it comes out!

Prelude: Make a Backup

The very first thing you need to do when your computer starts acting up is to create a backup of your personal data. Don’t waste time trying to troubleshoot or fix anything. Just make a backup. Right NOW!

The Best free Backup Software for your PC by Aibek
Top 10 Backup Software Apps For Your PC by Justin

You should consider logging into Safe Mode to perform the backup. You may find that it makes your system a lot more stable! That would also be a first step in troubleshooting.

How To Start In Windows Safe Mode & Its Uses by Tina

Now that you have your personal data backed up, let’s start troubleshooting and resolving the issues.

1. Troubleshoot Software Issues

A freezing operating system may have a lot of underlying issues. To verify whether or not your freezes are software-induced, boot your system into Safe Mode.

Safe Mode is a boot option that launches your computer in a very limited state. Only the most basic files and drivers absolutely necessary to run the operating system are loaded. If your system appears stable in Safe Mode, it is very likely that you have software issues, like driver conflicts or malware.

The article below explains how to boot into Safe Mode:

How To Start In Windows Safe Mode & Its Uses by Tina

If you do not see an improvement in Safe Mode, proceed to point 2.

If you do see an improvement, try the following:

uninstall recently installed devices and their drivers.
make sure you only have one antivirus program installed.
perform a Windows upgrade.
update any programs you are using regularly and all hardware drivers.
if running a specific program causes the freezes, try to update, uninstall, and reinstall the program.
in Safe Mode, scan your system for malware and remove anything you find.
perform general system maintenance.

Here are some useful resources for the above steps:

How To Uninstall Applications Efficiently And Remove Obsolete Files by Stefan
Stop & Delete Spyware With Malwarebytes [Windows] by Jimmy
7 Essential Security Downloads You MUST Have Installed by Aibek
10 Quick Fixes to Make your Windows Computer Faster by Shankar
Speeding Up Windows 7: Everything You Need to Know by Mahendra

2. Troubleshoot Hardware Issues

The Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) is a strong sign for a hardware incompatibility. The displayed error code provides a clue for what caused the computer to crash. Subsequently, you should analyze the error reports that Windows stores in response to a BSOD crash.

The following resources will help:

If updating or removing hardware drivers didn’t work and in case you don’t get a BSOD, you need to examine potential physical causes. Your computer could be overheating, a device could be damaged and dying, or a cable could be loose. Before you touch your hardware, however, make sure your computer is properly turned off to protect yourself. You must also ground yourself to avoid a discharge of static electricity, which could (further) damage your hardware.

The best way to troubleshoot hardware issues is to…

physically clean your hardware, i.e. free fans and power supply from dust.
check all cables for damage or loose connections.
check whether hardware components like the graphics card are properly plugged into the motherboard.
remove or replace single components like RAM modules and boot the computer without them.

The last point will reveal whether one of these components is broken.

3. Restore Windows

Windows can create restore points that allow you to roll back your entire system to a previous stable state. Make use of this feature and go back to a restore point where your system did not freeze or crash. The best thing is that you won’t lose your personal files.

This articles explains how it’s done:

How To Fix Your PC Using Windows Restore in XP, Vista & 7 by Jack

Last Resort: Repair Or Reinstall Windows

The easiest way to resolve issues with a Windows operating system that constantly freezes is a fresh installation. It is normal to reinstall Windows every 6 months to 2 years. If you’re running an older installation, it’s about time that you give it a fresh start!

How To Reinstall Windows Without Losing Your Data by Jorge
How to Prepare Yourself for System Restore From Scratch by Tina

Did this article help you to fix your computer from freezing? Please report your experiences!

Image credits: vladislav_studio, iQoncept

How Long Does Your Computer Take To Boot Up? [MakeUseOf Poll]

Karl L. Gechlik — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 01:31:08 +0000

Last week we asked you if you are going to quit Facebook due to privacy concerns.

The top response was ‘Yes, Facebook has gone too far’ with 39.6%. That means almost 40% of respondents are going to quit Facebook or might have already! 24.6% did not care about Facebook privacy and 23.2% do not use Facebook.

So after deleting my Facebook account, I have moved on to tackling my system’s boot time. I am personally using a little application called Soluto. Stay tuned for my review of it. I learned that I had close to a 1 and a half minute boot time on my 32bit Windows XP SP3 machine. This made me wonder how fast other people’s machines are at start up and here we are with today’s poll:

How long does your main computer take to boot up?survey software

Let us know what OS you are using in the comments. However, we are looking to see how long it takes for most modern computers to start up on average. By start up, I mean to get to a workable interface where you can launch applications or documents. What do you think is an acceptable boot time?

6 Different Ways To Kill Unresponsive Programs in Linux

Varun Kashyap — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:30:42 +0000

Most Windows users know about the utility of the Ctrl + Alt + Del keys when dealing with an unresponsive application. A program is said to be unresponsive when it doesn’t respond to any user interaction and neither does it perform its intended actions. There are plenty of jokes surrounding the whole Ctrl + Alt + Del combination that brings up the task manager in Windows and allows you to end unresponsive applications. Things seldom go this far in the Linux world, however claiming that such Linux unresponsiveness doesn’t occur would be a plain lie.

The good thing about Linux is that you almost never have to hit the reset button due to unresponsive or hung applications. There are so many ways you can gain back control that you never have to resort to such extreme measures. In this article, we take a look at some of the ways you can deal with unresponsive applications on your Linux box.

Dealing with Linux Unresponsiveness – Using System Monitor

First and foremost you can use the familiar System Monitor tool. It looks a lot like the Windows Task manager, only it is better. Not only does it provide you with lots of information about the current state of the computer system, you can use the Processes tab to look for any misbehaving applications and choose to Kill or Stop the process. Both of these operations are very different in the Linux world: stop suspends the execution of the process and kill would close it completely.

Using the ‘kill’ command

So far so good, however there are times when you cannot use the GUI altogether. Starting the System Monitor is out of question in such situations. In these situations, you can leverage the power of Linux command line to your advantage. You can enter these commands in a terminal if it is available or you can switch to a virtual terminal using Ctrl + Alt + F1 and logging in using the text mode.

Each running process has a unique process ID under Linux. If you know the process ID of the miscreant you can straightaway issue:

kill

to kill the misbehaving process. This should hopefully restore some sanity to your computer and you can switch back to the GUI using Ctrl + Alt + F7.

Using the ‘pkill’ and ‘pgrep’ commands

If on the other hand you don’t know the process ID then you can either kill the process by its name or you can analyze all the running processes to diagnose the problem (using something like the top command).

You can use the pkill command to kill using process name. As an example the following command would kill Firefox:

pkill firefox

Notice how you didn’t have to know or specify the process ID. Alternatively, you can use the pgrep command to get the process ID of any running process on the system. The process ID can then be used to kill or send other signals to the process.

Using the ‘xkill’ command

When using the GUI you can also use the xkill command which makes your mouse pointer all mighty and powerful After issuing the xkill command you can click on the application you want to kill and it will be gone and killed for you in a click!

Using the ‘killall’ command

Last but not the least, there is the killall command. Terrifying as it may seem, it doesn’t kill all the processes running on the computer. Instead it is used to kill multiple instances of the same program. eg killall firefox will kill all windows and Firefox profiles that might be currently executing.

There are a lot more to these commands than what can be covered in a short write-up. ‘pkill’ for instance, lets you search for a process not only by its name but by the user who owns the process, the time it was started or lists all the processes that do not match a certain criteria. In addition, these commands can be used to send other signals to the processes as well. By default, SIGTERM is sent which may be ignored by some processes in which case you can use the kill -9 to send a KILL signal. You can learn about all the options by reading the manuals for the respective commands.

Have you ever faced similar situations with Linux unresponsiveness? What did you do to resolve them?

5 Sites To Learn How To Repair Your Own Computer

Tim Lenahan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:00:37 +0000

Here on MakeUseOf, we’ve shared DIY stuff before (5 awesome DIY sites, ThomasNet ““ An Awesome Repository Of Technical Information for DIY Men, 3 Cool Science Experiments You Can Do At Home). The purpose of this article is to share 5 pages that help more specifically with how to learn computer repair.

Have you ever had a problem with your computer and gotten a quote from one of those box stores? Holy cow! I know this guy who got a virus, took his tower to a store and paid several hundred dollars to have them install an anti-virus program and “save the day.” I am serious, several hundred dollars! OK, I understand that a laborer is worthy of his hire, but I believe that every single one of us would jump on the chance to save a few bucks if we could.

If there was any possibility to do some of those PC repairs on your own, and therefore save a few buck, is that something you’d learn how to do? Here are five links that will help you with those DIY computer repair jobs.

(1) Fixing My Computer… 100% free step-by-step guide

If you can get by the pink, blue, and green pastel colors, this site can be a real great resource in you journey to DIY computer repair proficiency. Once you arrive at this site, you’ll easily find, along the left hand side, a nifty menu system obviously designed to look like a file explorer. On that menu you’ll find categories for almost any kind of fix you can think of. Check out a few of them and see if a problem you are having is covered. I’m not sure what’s up with the butterfly, so if you can get to the bottom of that, please tip us off in the comments!

(2) Yahoo Answers Community – Computers & Internet

I know, there are many communities out there on the internet that are ready and willing to give answers to your questions for nothing more than a few kudos. Yahoo Answers is just one of the communities that I’ve had the most luck with. For some tips on computer problems you are having, ask the community over in the Computers & Internet section and you’re sure to find some answers! Do what I do. Begin by searching through the many questions already answered. Odds are someone else had the same, or similar, problem that you are having so avoid the fuss of re-asking the same question.

(3) LaptopMag.com – 11 Ways to Fix Your Laptop

I like this article because it attempts to get right to the point with some of the most common problems associated with laptops. The goal of the article is better articulated by the writer himself:

To pinpoint the most common problems, we picked the brains of senior technical-support officials at Alienware, Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba. And we’ve provided solutions for getting your laptop back up and running with minimal effort.

You can go through each one of the 11 pages OR you can use the nifty little dropdown menu at the bottom of each page to jump the the topic you need. This article covers topics such as overheating, battery problems, network issues, and virus or spyware infestation. Like I said, the basics are covered here. They’re not exhaustive, but a really good start!

(4) Lifehacker’s Top 10 Computer Hardware Fixes and Upgrades

Some of us will never get to the point where we will be wanting to build a PC from scratch, like number 1 on LifeHacker’s top 10 list of computer hardware fixes and upgrades, but some of these fixes or upgrades are easy enough for most of us. I’ve used my own good opinion to rate the number one’s on this list: Easiest fix on the list? Changing or upgrading RAM on a laptop (unscrew a few screws and that’s about it); Most creative? Using elastic strips to quiet a noisy hard drive; Most difficult or involved? Starting from scratch on your own PC. Good list and a great help.

(5) Fixed4free.com – Computer category

This site is more of an answers community. It seems pretty exhaustive in the computers category. The site is fairly easy to use – if you notice, the white speech balloons mean that there is no answer yet and a green speech balloon means there is an answer. Browse around and see if you can find an answer to your question. If not, it seems that there is a section that allows you to ask a question. Check out this post (because I think its funny): i wanna go on bebo but i cant in skwl?. I already learned a new trick from the site: My computer screen as turned upside down how do i turn it back?. Check it out and see what you can learn!

As a word of warning, there are obviously some repairs that not every person is capable of accomplishing on their own. If you are over your head, and you KNOW it, seek help, probably even professional help. The purpose of this post is to save you some dough on some things that you ARE capable of doing, once you know how.

Do you know of any other online sources that help with DIY pc repair? Feel free to share in the comments!

Easily Kill Hung Processes on Windows with Super F4

Karl L. Gechlik — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:01:30 +0000

I have been using the Windows hot key combination to kill a running program for a really long time now. For those of you who do not know it is Alt-F4. This will politely request that the open application on your screen is to close. If you have unsaved work, the program might ask you to save it or if the program was really hung it might not do anything at all.

But with this little 116KB download from GoogleCode you can force an application to close with Control-Alt-F4. This will effectively kill the application without any other intervention. The program also offers the option to press the Windows key + F4 and then click on the window you want to kill. These two options make this a handy dandy item for my toolkit.

I downloaded the application and installed it. You have options within the installer to check for updates as well as making Super F4 start up with Windows. Once it is running you will see this item in your system tray:

The icon for Super F4 is the one all the way on the left. If you right-click on it you will see your basic options. You can disable it, hide the tray icon and set the auto-start functionality as well as exit the application.

Normally when killing FileZilla I would get a dialogue box that looked like this:

That means I have to actually click on the box and answer the question. If I want to be swift about it I just need to hit my Control-Alt-F4 and blammo FileZilla is closed with no pop-up. That means I can just continue on to do what I have to do.

I simulated a failure in Excel and hit the Control + Alt + F4 and just like that it was closed! Sweet! Next up I wanted to give the other option a shot. I opened up everything and I wanted to try the Windows Key + F4 to choose the program I wanted to close. The mouse cursor turns into a Skull and Cross Bones. You simply click on the application you want to kill and that’s it.

This is a great program for power users but remember if you have not saved your work in the application and you close it with Super F4 you will lose those changes you made since you last saved.

Do you have another way of killing hung processes? Share them with us in the comments.

7 Common Reasons Why Windows Can Get Unresponsive

TanaG — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:00:46 +0000

A irresponsive system is a relatively common error you will encounter when using a PC. In many cases, you won’t even get a message that your system is not responding because the computer has hung and it can’t send you even that message. Very often, when your system is not responding, this means that neither the mouse, nor the keyboard are working and the only solution is to hit the Restart button.

When your system is not responding, usually CPU usage is at 100%, no matter if you do anything or not. On the other hand, it is not mandatory for this to happen, so if your CPU usage is not shown to be 100%, it is still possible that your system is not responding.

7 Reasons Why a System Is Not Responding

There are tons of reasons why a system can stop responding ““ it could be due to a hardware or a software conflict. Such errors don’t happen only on PCs but on all kinds of hardware (if this is of any comfort to you) and the symptoms could vary ““ from a totally blocked machine – to a PC which is responding very, very slowly. Here are seven of the most common reasons why a system is not responding and what you can do to prevent them.

1. Hardware incompatibilities

This is one of the most frequent reasons why a system stops responding. The culprit could be anything ““ from a mouse/keyboard, to a CD drive, to a USB device. In some cases, you might even experience a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), which is one more symptom of hardware incompatibilities. Remove the suspect and replace it with a functioning device and see if this helps.

A Blue Screen of Death is one of the most common symptoms when a system becomes irresponsive

2. Driver issues

Even if the hardware itself is not a problem, the drivers that manage it could be. If you have recently installed a new driver, this is the first suspect to check. Uninstall the driver and see if this helps. Don’t worry, there are easy ways to remove old and faulty drivers from Windows.

3.Messed up Windows Registry

Windows and its Registry are very complex creatures and even minor messes with them could not only make a system not responding error but could even make a computer totally useless. That is why it is a good idea to clean your Windows and the Registry from time to time, even if there are no visible problems. One great way to do it is with the help of nCleaner.

4. Malware of all kinds

Spyware, adware, trojans and the other pests you get for free from the Internet, are also a common reasons why a system is not responding. Just run a good anti-malware program and that’s it. Here are some great free online malware and virus scanners you might want to check.

5. Antivirus programs

As strange as it might sound, anti-virus programs can hang a computer. If you have more than one anti-virus program, conflicts between them are pretty common but even if you have only one anti-virus program, still there are many ways in which it can mess with the Registry, or with the applications on your computer, thus causing it to crash. Try to see which of the antivirus program is the problem and uninstall it. For antivirus recommendations, take a look at our poll for the best free Antivirus applications.

6. Bugs in applications

Poorly-written system tools and applications can cause a lot of trouble but it is not only system applications that can crash a computer. Browsers, such as Firefox or Internet Explorer can frequently hang when a poorly-written script is executed. If you are lucky to know which application in particular makes your system irresponsive, uninstall it (or in the case of a browser ““ disable the faulty plugin) and pray that this fixes the situation.

7. User intervention

Tweaks are great and very often they are safe to do (if you take the necessary precautions, of course) but as a matter of fact, tweaks that went bad are also a common reason for why a system is not responding. That’s why you need to be very cautious when you tweak your computer. And above all ““ always make a backup, a system image and/or a restore point before you start tweaking, so that if the tweak goes unplanned, you still have a lifeline.

The above reasons and their suggested workarounds are just some of the most common causes as to why a system is not responding. When your system is not responding, try these solutions and if they solve your problem ““ be very, very happy about it!

Feeling geeky? Check out these articles to make your computer run faster and troubleshoot problems:

How To Kill Unresponsive Programs without The Task Manager

Varun Kashyap — Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:10 +0000

Windows is generally not known for its stability. Among other things there are frequent “Not Responding” applications. The reasons may vary from less RAM to Viruses to poorly designed applications. So what do you do when an application hangs up?

I bet you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del or fire up the task manager in some other way, reach for the application and choose “End Task”. Now there is nothing wrong with this approach, in fact as long as it gets the job done it doesn’t matter how you do it. However, ever had the situation where the task manager itself takes ages to load up? Of course it can happen because task manager does a lot of other things besides just ending tasks so it requires that much more resources. Apart from that, how about ending the hung applications with just a single click?

Yeah! you can do so. Its simple to achieve. Just follow along:

Right click on the desktop and choose New > Shortcut

In the dialog box that appears just type the following:
taskkill.exe /f /fi “status eq not responding”

Give it a name of your choice

Now just wait for something to start “Not Responding” and let loose your Task Killer!

So what did we do exactly? We just created a shortcut to run a command. The command being taskkill. Whenever you double click the shortcut you will invoke the said command which takes care of the rest. In particular the command we use says that kill all taskes whose status is equal to “not responding” and kill them forcefully (/f).

The /fi switch is used to filter and pinpoint the application to kill. We are using the Program’s status to filter the applications that are not responding and then kill them. You can filter(and thus kill) by memory usage (equal to, greater than, less than or not equal to), cpu time, window title and others.

In case you are wondering that its still not quite “the single click situation”, you can enable single click from within Folder Options, or better still – right click on the shortcut you just created, choose properties and assign it a shortcut key!

Do you know of some similar neat tricks?