Chapter 35: Troubleshooting Windows XP

Dealing with Hung or Crashed Programs

Despite all the testing that software vendors do, Windows and the applications you run under it have bugs and sometimes hang (stop responding) or crash (fail altogether). When an application crashes, Windows displays a box telling you about it. There's not much you can do at that point, other than click OK. You may want to restart Windows if you're concerned that the program may have damaged files or Windows' internal operations.

If a program hangs, you generally can force Windows to stop the hung program. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to open the Windows Task Manager dialog box, shown here:

On the Applications tab of the Windows Task Manager, a hung program usually has the notation "Not responding" in the Status column. (Healthy programs are designated as "Running.") Select the name of the program and click End Task. Normally the program then exits.

If all else fails, press CTRL-ALT-DEL to display the Windows Task Manager and then choose Shut Down | Restart from the menu bar: Windows should restart. If the hang was particularly nasty, Windows runs ChkDsk so that disk errors can be repaired.

For more information about the Windows Task Manager, see Chapter 34.

Windows Error Reporting Windows XP can call home when it has a problem. That is, if you have an Internet connection, when a program crashes, Windows can send an error report back to Microsoft. Microsoft promises to send you an automatic notification when they receive the error report. By collecting hang and crash information, Microsoft can fix problems with Windows more effectively. When a program crashes or hangs, you see a dialog box asking whether to send a report. Microsoft promises that the information in the error report doesn't contain any personal information about you, just system configuration information about your computer. However, you also have the option of turning Windows Error Reporting off. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and choose Properties from the menu that appears. On the System Properties dialog box, click the Advanced tab. Click the Error Reporting button to display the Error Reporting dialog box: You can choose whether to do any error reporting, and whether to send reports only about Windows errors or about application program errors as well.