Actual Usage Points to Prevent Freezes/Problems

Aside from preventative measures, and on-going maintenance, there are certain things you should keep in mind while using your computer. 

 

A lot of this you probably know, or knew at one time, so to bring it all back into focus, we’ll do this section as a Q&A.

 

a. Don’t overwork your computer. @

When you know the CPU or Hard Drive is working hard, don’t click, click, click, or start another process.  There are several ways you can know the computer is busy:

-       Listen for the whirling of the hard drive or CD/DVD drive.

-       Look for the system’s clock icon, hour-glass, or other “Busy!” icons (like the Mac’s spinning beach ball) that indicate the computer is busy. 

-       Your Pc may also have a light that blinks when one of the drives is reading or writing. 

-       Macs have a great utility called “Activity Monitor” which, among other things, can display a CPU usage graph.  Vista is bound to have a good one too.

-       Buy or download a third-party system meter program, which shows key information like percent of CPU being used, and amount of memory being taken up.  For the Mac, we use the free utility called MenuMeter.  Check out the Internet for proven PC equivalents; do a search at download.com for “system meter” utilities.

But whatever indication you use, when you know your computer is busy, leave it alone until it has settled down.

 

b. Limit the number of applications in memory. @

Don’t keep too many applications in memory at one time.  Some systems manage memory better than others.  But most, like Windows, reach their physical RAM memory limit in a straight-forward way.  Your computers probably have 2 or 4 GByte of memory.  As your RAM reaches its limit, your computer’s performance will decrease, and the likelihood of freezes will increase.  So simply quit applications, and close large files, when you’re finished with them.

 

c. Quit apps when finished. @

Another reason to quit applications when you’re finished with them is that certain “house-keeping” routines run upon quitting, or upon launch.  In fact, it may even help to re-launch an application in the middle of some major work.

 

d. Re-start regularly. @

Re-start your computer regularly – every one or two days would be fine.  Re-starting is good for your computer; there are many system routines that are run only at shut-down and start-up time, which keep your computer healthy and happy.  (But do make a point to quit all applications before re-starting.)  Re-starting is especially good to do after installing new software, regardless of whether or not the software requires it.  (Note that a restart, or a shut down followed by a startup later on accomplish the same thing.)

If you like to keep files and tabs of browsers open, with most new operating systems and browsers you can do so, and still shut down/restart your computer. With Lion, when you shut down/restart, check the radio button thta says Re-open windows when logged on. And in browsers, look in the preferences and it should be pretty easy how to find the preference to re-open (or not) tabs upon re-launch.

 

e. Keep cool @

If your computer is in an environment that is not too warm, you could choose to keep it on all the time, and set it to sleep/hibernate when inactive to save electricity.  Though do re-start it occasionally. (See point d.)

 But if your computer gets overly hot, or is in a warm/hot environment, that’s definitely not good for it.  The best solution in this case is to make the environment cooler (down to at least 18 – 22 ^o C).  And a simple solution to keeping the computer itself cool is to have a fan blow on it.  If your computer does tend to get hot, make sure it shuts down or hibernates when not in use.

If you have a fan regulator app, cranking up the fan before you play a processor-intensive game, for example, is fine, but avoid turning the fan speed down to the minimum allowed by the operating system.

 

f. + Avoid Force-Quits, etc.

This has been mentioned before, but to reiterate, while using your computer, do your best to avoid having to do anything extreme, like force quitting, or even worse, hard-shutting down your computer. Every once in a while you may find that there is no alternative to un-freeze a computer but to hard shut it down, usually accomplished by pressing and holding the on/of switch.  But this is always bad for the computer, so you should never do it if you can help it.  After a computer has apparently frozen, wait a couple of minutes, and at least try a (Mac) Force-quit, or (PC) ctrl-alt-delete first.  If that doesn’t work, but the computer is not absolutely, completely frozen, wait a good long while before resorting to a hard shut down – at least 5 or 10 minutes.  You’d be surprised how often a computer can seemingly come back to life after a long while of apparently doing nothing.

 

Plus The Top 3 Reasons Your Computer Has Problems.