My PC is Locked Up!

When your PC locks up. (note that I said "when" not "if") it is very frustrating. It also means you are going to loose what ever data you were working on. Most writing programs have an auto-save feature. Meaning that it saves your work periodicaly. They put this feature in for good reason. When you are in a program that does not have that feature you should save at periods according to the value of the work you are doing. The more value the data, the more often you should save your work.

Most lock-ups that I have experienced were due to over use of resources. Meaning, I was doing things that required more of a PC than I had. Try scanning an 8 1/2 by 11 color picture with a scanner using 300 dpi and 256 color on a PC with 1 meg of video ram. Instent crash. Any time you are working with graphics you are pushing your luck on a small PC.

Of course there are other reasons for crashes. We are not going to try to look at all the causes of crashs or lock-ups. We are now just concerned about how to excape.

You will find a varitity of conditions during a lock-up. You can just loose control of some of the options in the window you are in or you may loose control of your mouse and keyboard.

When you find that nothing seems to work and you are stuck on one window. Look at the LED light on the PC for the hard drive. If it is blinking even if it is just an occasional blink, just wait a while. Sometimes a system just takes time to do something and the light blinking is an indication that it is still trying. I have never heard of any set time to wait, so I use how long it takes to get a cup of coffee. I assume that if it has not done something by then, it never will. (Other than downloading) If you see no activity in the light, try the "Esc" button and the "Windows" key if you have it. If you still get no responce, Hold down the "Alt" + "Ctrl" key and hit "Delete" one time. Hopefully that will bring up the "Close Program Window". In this window is a another window with a list of what is running on your PC. The program you were in at the time of the lock-up will be at the top of the list and usually highlighted. If this is the case, hit the "End Task" button in the lower left of the window. This should get you out of that program and put you back in control. Occasionally when you hit "End Task", a second window will pop up and all you have to do is hit "End Task" in that one too. If this works and you need to continue with what you were doing and that involved heavy use of graphics, You may try decreasing the size or color or dpi if working with a scanner. Also you could use the "Alt+Ctrl+Delete" to shut down unnecessary things running which compete for resources. WARNING! DO NOT END TASK ON "SYSTRAY" OR "EXPLORER". These are needed to run Win-98. Note! "Explorer" is not Internet Explorer nor is it Windows Explorer. Duh! don't ask.

If nothing happends then do the "Alt+Ctrl+Delete" again. If still nothing, try the "Alt+Ctrl+Delete" two times in succession. At this point if nothing has worked you will have to just turn off the PC. This is sometimes called a "Hard Boot". For sure, you will loose all unsaved data you were working on. It may or may not harm the program itself and can damage a part of Windows 98. Upon reboot you will notice that win-98 runs scandisk automaticaly to correct the problems caused by not using a normal shut down. If your PC does not even start up, You need to dig out your boot disk and seek tech assistance. Hopefully you have already read the section on making a proper Boot disk.

 Be aware that sometimes Anti-Virus programs can cause conflicts. To see if that is your problem try disabling the Anti-virus program and go back to what you were doing when you had the "Lock-up".

If after a "Lock-up" that required a reboot, you find that the program you were in has problems you may have to reinstall that program. If you are partitioned, be sure you locate where the main body of the program is located. Most programs will default to C: drive, if you have the program in J: drive and you just install the program, you will end up with two of the same program installed. If you install it in the correct place and it still has the same problem, you may have to remove the program, run "Regclean" (see section 12 for "regclean" use) and reinstall the program. (See section 16 for a clean install).