Computer Tricks

What to Do When Computer Keeps Freezing – 6 Proven Solutions

It’s an irritating thing if your computer continues to freeze while you are in the middle of playing games or working. You might want to do some research to know what things are causing the freeze. This article will focus on what to do if your computer or laptop frequently freezes.

Why Computer Keeps Freezing

There is one simple diagnostic test to determine if your computer is frozen, simply press Num Lock button on the keyboard and see if the Num Lock LED will turn off and on. If the light can turn off and on, press Ctrl+Alt+Del and End Task the frozen program.

One thing that you should know is that when you find your PC freezes regularly, the possible culprits could be a wireless mouse or the faulty USB port. A simple solution is trying a different USB port.

If it does not work, read on the post to find other causes of why Windows 10/8/7 keeps freezing, and recover the lost data using a professional file recovery software.

Top 8 Reasons for “Why Computer Keeps Freezing”

As discussed earlier, it is important to identify the causes of a computer that keeps freezing. Here we list 8 most common reasons such as.

1] Too Many Programs are Opening at One Time

Each program or window you open on your computer takes both internal resources and hardware to keep it functional. If you have too many programs open at one time, your computer may be low on resources, which caused the computer to is freeze or even halt.

To make sure your computer freezing is not being caused by multiple programs running simultaneously, you may try right-click Task Manager, choose Task Manager, and then click the Processes to find the program that is frozen, at last, click End Task. (The following picture shows you how to do it.)

2] Computer is Overheating

Excess heat can damage your computer’s performance, slow it down, and even cause a computer to freeze. Furthermore, if the computer reaches a high temperature, the integrated circuit of your system processor may get damaged.

In most cases, overheating results from the environment that the computer is in. It’s recommended to ensure the casing on your computer is good, the proper ventilation is guaranteed and the fan can run normally.

3] Driver Corruption and Driver Errors

Drivers are used for communicating between the operating system and hardware devices. Hence, the outdated or damaged drivers are likely to cause your Windows to keeps freezing. The best way to solve this is to check your drivers and make sure they are updated.

4] An Insufficient RAM

To keep the computer system running smoothly, considerable RAM is mandatory. If you notice the system freezes at regular intervals of time, you should check if the RAM is insufficient. Upgrading your RAM or re-installing the operating system is a good solution.

5] BIOS Settings

Another reason you should know is that modifying BIOS settings could put the system in the freeze mode. Usually, you might reset the BIOS to default to fix your computer freezing problem .

6] Computer Viruses

Any virus, malware, and malicious software are likely to cause the computer to freeze. You should perform an antivirus check regularly to prevent the issue from happening.

7] Corrupted or Missing System Files

It’s not surprising that Windows 10, Windows 8/7 computer may keep freezing due to missing or corrupted system files.

8] Other Software Errors

As you know, some applications may take up a lot of memory to attempt to perform actions or access resources that Windows cannot recognize.

If your computer cannot handle the strain, it can get hung up and freeze. To fix this issue, you had better update all the third-party software that you installed.

Apart from the above-mentioned reasons, users also find other reasons such as low disk space, broken memory card and so on. Here we begin to discuss how to fix this issue without affecting the original data on your computer.

How to Fix Computer Keeps Freezing Issue?

Method 1. Free up additional disk space on the C drive

Your Windows 10 or Windows 7 will keep freezing if your C drive is running out of space because the system files are stored there.

You can get some space by deleting some unwanted files or programs on your C drive. Alternatively, you could MiniTool Partition Wizard to extend additional free space to the C drive .

Method 2: Run Memory Check

If you suspect your computer has memory problems, you can follow tutorial step by step to run the Windows Memory Diagnostics utility.

  • First of all, press Windows + R, type mdsched.exe in the text input box, and then hit Enter.

Run Memory Check

  • Then you need to click Restart now and check for problems(recommended) to continue.

Windows Memory Diagnostics

  • Windows will then restart, and you will see the following window.

Windows Memory Diagnostics utility

Method 3. You should update all device drivers to the newest

Here is how to do. Right-click This PC in Windows 10/8 or My Computer in Windows 7, then click on Manage, and choose Device Manager.

Open the category that contains the device which you want to update its drivers. Subsequently, update drivers according to your version of Windows.

For Windows 10/8 users: Right-click the hardware’s name and choose Update Driver Software… (see picture below).

Update Driver Software

For Windows 7 users: Right-click on the hardware’s name, select Properties, and choose the Update Driver… under the Driver tab.(see picture below).

Update Driver

Method 4: Run the System File Checker

If the system files are missing or corrupted, please following these methods to restore them to solve the Windows 10 freezes issue.

1) Right-click Start and choose Command Prompt or Command Prompt (Admin) from the Quick Link menu.

Command Prompt

2) Then, you can type sfc /scannow and then press Enter.

sfc /scannow

Windows will begin to scan your system for corrupted files and attempt to fix them. At last, you can type exit and press Enter.

Method 5. Perform System Restore

If your Windows 10, Windows 8 or Windows 7 computer still freezes after trying all the above solutions, then your Windows might be corrupted. Restoring your operating system is a must.

Please keep this in mind. System re-installation is an effective solution to fix a computer that keeps freezing. We highly recommend you to back up your data in advance because this operation will delete some data from your PC.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a decent choice to retrieve lost data when your PC or laptop keeps freezing or event won’t respond.

The most important thing is that  it will recover lost data effectively without losing original data. Download it, follow the tutorial and you could recover data from the computer that keeps freezing, and recover data when your PC isn’t booting.

  • Step 1. Install this professional data recovery software on a working computer, launch it and then click Bootable Media.
  • Step 2. Now click WinPE-based media with MiniTool plug-in feature.

WinPE-based media with MiniTool plug-in

  • Step 3. Choose a media destination to create a bootable USB drive or CD/DVD.
  • Step 4. Connect the bootable drive to that computer that keeps freezing, and boot from the bootable drive, then you will see the following window.

MiniTool PE Loader

  • Step 5. In the MiniTool PE Loader interface, click on the MiniTool Power Data Recovery to navigate to its main UI.
  • Step 6. Select the target drive that you want to recover on the main UI.

Select the target drive

From there, you will see 4 different data recovery modes.

This PC mode focuses on recovering lost or deleted data from the RAW, damaged, or formatted, inaccessible partitions.

Removable Disk Drive mode is mainly used for getting back lost photos, mp3 audio files, and videos from flash drives and memory sticks.

Hard Disk Drive mode can recover files after partition gets deleted or lost.

CD/DVD Drive mode is helpful to recovers lost and deleted files from damaged, scratched or defective CD and DVD disks.

  • Step 7. Scan the selected drive. If you find all the files that you need when scanning the data, you can click stop.

Scanning the data

  • Step 8. Select all needed files, then click Save to store them in other safe place. We recommend storing the files on another drive to prevent the original data from getting overwritten.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery

MiniTool Power Data Recovery can effectively and quickly recovered lost data from Windows 10 computer that keeps freezing. After data recovery, you can try re-installing Windows to solve the laptop not responding issue.

Method 6. Seek Help from Repair Shop

If none of the above solutions work and you do not have time to perform a series of diagnostic tests, you will need to decide if it’s necessary to take your PC to a computer repair shop and ask a computer technician to fix Windows computer keeps freezing problem.

About the author

Harshil Barot


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