Preventing "Program Not Responding" Errors

The first step to never having to see a 'Not Responding' error again is to identify which program is causing the issue. Usually, these error messages are caused by a single program. You can tell which program is not responding by the change in the program's title bar, as non-responsive programs will show "(Not Responding)" at the top of the window.

Finding the cause of the Not Responding errors

Your program will generate a Not Responding error when it is either busy or crashed. You may see a dialogue box that says something like, "This program is not responding. It may be busy, waiting for a response from you, or it may have stopped running. Click Cancel to ignore and return to Windows. To close this program immediately, click End Task. You will lose any unsaved information in this program." The dialogue box will give you the option to "End Task" or "Cancel".

Pressing "End Task" is not always necessary. If you are running complicated software, like imagine software, Microsoft Office, or a game, the program may just be 'concentrating' - that is, it is too busy performing a requested operation to respond to you. Eventually, it will recover and the program will begin responding to your input again.

On occasion, your program may have actually crashed. This can be caused by one of three things:

If you do have to force-quit an application, it may not always close properly. This will cause the program to generate a "Program Already Running" error the next time you try to run it. You can restart your computer to resolve this error.

Now that you how to resolve 'Not Responding' errors, you won't ever have to press "Ctrl + Alt + Delete" again!

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