"My Vista keeps freezing" is common complaint about this operating system from the Microsoft. Read on, to know how one can overcome various Windows Vista keeps freezing up situations.
Every commercial software goes through rigorous testing process aimed at finding and eliminating bugs in it, before it is launched to the consumers. However, all the problems in a software do not surface during this process. Sometimes, it takes years for a bug in the system to surface and get known. Freezing is one such bug that has escaped the attention of the software testing team employed by the Microsoft. It is really annoying for any computer user when the system freezes on him, right in the middle of some important work for no apparent reason.
‘Thawing’ your Frozen Vista
The freezing up of a computer operating system is not unique to the Vista. Every computer user, whatever the operating system, due to hardware or software issues faces this problem one or the other time. However, it has been noted that this problem is more persistent with the Windows Vista. By making Vista, Microsoft thought that they had, for once, made a system free of bugs as it has licked the problems faced by the other systems made by it.
Most of the time, origin of the problem lies in its system registry. Windows registry is used by the computer to store necessary information about the software as well as hardware plugged into it. It is a sort of database which stores pairs of values that are read, every time system wants to do something in response to the users command. Computer depend on system registry as an individual depends on its memory to do every day tasks. When there is some problem with the values stored in it computer performance suffers. It may slow down or freeze, all together, right in the middle of the task.
If the corruption of the entries in the system registry is widespread, it leads to a lot of complaints, mostly on startup. In such situation, the computer user may have to put up with the problems such as:
- The computer user may get stuck at the green bar that is displayed on the screen after the computer is turned on. The green bar keeps going on and the user never gets the next window.
- Since the problem is in the values stored in the system registry that are read to and used to load the various files of the Vista, the freeze up occurs randomly and the next time the user may get stuck at the password box. The user wants to click in the box, so as to enter the password, hovers the mouse icon on box and computer freezes.
- At other times, he successfully enters the password, but fails to makes it to the desktop.
- Another kind of startup problem is that the computer takes the user to the desktop but gets frozen when one of the automatically launched program from the startup folder is loaded into the computers memory.
Possible Solutions
Restoring the corrupt entries in the system registry to their proper values is one of the solution to this problem.
- One can do this task by using the system restore facility. This facility creates restore points which has system information associated with them. This information can be used by the computer to load the old working system values. To use system restore, one must start the computer in safe mode and at the command prompt type rstrui.exe and then press enter.
- To make your life easier with Vista run defragmentation facility to clean up the disk regularly.
- There are some software available that can be used for the task of cleaning and restoring the system registry. Registry errors, most often, slows down the computer. From time to time, using such software can be useful to restore the registry values and increase the overall performance of the system.
It is important to take proper measures, at the earliest signs of trouble, to avoid frustrating situations. There is large amount of information available on the internet going through which can help you sort Windows Vista problems. If you haven’t yet downloaded software patches released by the Microsoft to tune the Vista, then it is high time to download the service pack released for it. If you are, still, unable to clear the problem, then may be you would like to contact Microsoft helpline for the advice.