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What to Do If My Laptop Keeps Freezing and Not Responding?
What if my laptop keeps freezing and not responding? This is probably one of the biggest concerns among users these days. Don't worry, you can find 4 ways to get your laptop back to normal in this article.
By Yuka Updated on November 9, 2022
User Case: My Asus Laptop Keeps Freezing and Not Responding Windows 10
“Lately my office laptop has been freezing and then not responding every morning. Usually after a prolonged shutdown (12+ hours). When I arrived in the morning, everything looked fine and reacted normally. As soon as I start opening programs, the laptop starts to lag or freeze. Sometimes the task manager opens, sometimes it doesn't, but usually everything becomes unresponsive. How can I solve this problem?”
- Question from Tom’s Hardware
Laptop keeps freezing and not responding is a common trouble for many Windows 10 users. When the laptop freezes and stops responding, it is recommended to wait for a response first. If after some time, Windows 10 laptop still keeps freezing, it's time to fix your Windows 10 laptop keeps freezing and not responding issue to avoid it from happening again. Before you start to learn about effective solutions, you can see what are the causes of this problem.
Why My Laptop Keeps Freezing and Not Responding on Windows 10?
It is important to determine the actual cause of your laptop keeps freezing and not responding. The most common reasons why ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. laptops keep freezing are listed below.
- Too many programs open. Every program in a computer requires a certain amount of internal and external (hardware) resources to run. If multiple programs are running at the same time, your computer may not have enough memory or computing power to support all of them.
- The driver is corrupt or outdated. Drivers are used to communicate between hardware devices and the operating system. Outdated or corrupt drivers may cause your laptop to constantly freeze and become unresponsive.
- Insufficient RAM. If your laptop keeps freezing and not responding, you may be running low on memory. You may consider upgrading your memory or reinstalling your operating system to fix the problem.
- A malfunctioning external device. A malfunctioning USB or other external device (such as a mouse and keyboard) may cause the laptop to freeze.
- Computer Virus. Viruses can also be a major cause of computer freezes. You should do regular antivirus checks.
- Corrupted or missing system files. According to our investigation, we found that Windows 10 keeps freezing due to corrupted or missing system files.
How to Fix the Problem that My Laptop Keeps Freezing and Not Responding?
After understanding what is causing your laptop to freeze and become unresponsive, you can try the following methods in turn to see if you can get your computer back to normal.
Method 1. Close Background Programs in Task Manager
Running multiple programs at once can easily consume your computer's resources. Your Dell laptop may keep freezing and not responding due to lack of system resources. Therefore, it is recommended that you close redundant programs in Task Manager.
- Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to open Task Manager. Select the unresponsive program and choose End Task.
Method 2. Update All Device Drivers
As mentioned in the reasons above, the driver is the communication medium between the hardware and the system. If it is outdated or incompatible with the operating system, it can sometimes result in the problem that ASUS laptop keeps freezing or not responding. You can fix this problem by updating the device drivers.
- Right-click This PC and select Manage, the Computer Management window will be displayed.
- Click on Device Manager and locate a device. Open the category that you think contains the device you want to update and click Update Driver to update its driver.
Method 3. Run Scannow Command to Repair Corrupt System Files
Corrupt or missing system files are also one of the reasons for the problem of constant freezing and unresponsiveness of laptops. Fortunately, you can help solve this problem with the tool that comes with Windows - System File Checker, here are the detailed steps.
- Press Windows + S to open the search box. Type command prompt and open to Run the Command Prompt as administrator.
- Type sfc /scannow in Command Prompt and press Enter to execute the command.
- Wait for Windows to find and repair the corrupted system files. Finally, restart your Dell, HP, ASUS, etc. laptop and see if it works properly.
Method 4. Perform System Restore to Restore Laptop to Previous State
If the above 3 methods don't help you completely fix your laptop keeps freezing and not responding error, you may need to restore your Windows 10 laptop with the System Restore feature. It is important to note that the prerequisite for running this operation is that you have created a system restore point before. If you have not created a System Restore point, you may need to reset your PC to help you resolve the issue completely.
✨ Note: Before you apply this way, you must backup important files in case of errors caused by data loss. Applications installed after the restore point will also disappear.
- Press Windows + S to open the search box. Type system restore in the search blank, and select Recovery from the result list.
- In the Recovery windows, click Open System Restore. Then click Next in the to restore system files and settings.
- Select the restore point in the box below, then click Next.
✨ Note: If you don't want to suffer the big hassle of reinstalling your recently installed programs, you can click Scan for affected programs to find it, and then back up what you need.
- Confirm that everything is correct and click Finish to restore the laptop settings to the previous date.
Backup Your Laptop Before Making Some Important Changes
The "My laptop keeps freezing and not responding" problem plagues many Windows 10 users. The four methods provided above for you will get your laptop back to normal. However, it is important to note that when performing these actions, it is recommended that you back up the important files on your laptop first.
AOMEI Backupper Standard is a free backup software for all Windows PCs, including Windows 11, 10, 8.1/8, 7, Vista and XP (32/64-bit), etc. You can use it to backup your system, entire disks, individual file/folder to internal or external hard drives, USB flash drives, cloud drives, network locations and NAS devices.
To protect your important files on your computer, you just need to download it on your laptop. Then launch this freeware, click Backup on the main interface and then select File Backup.
Additional Helpful Functions:
🧶 Schedule Backup: You can create backups at different frequencies, for example, daily, weekly, monthly. This allows you to create an automated Windows 10 backup task to avoid repetitive operations.
🎨 Backup Scheme: This saves disk space and improves backup efficiency. By default, the software runs incremental backup after the first full backup, backing up only files that have changed since the last backup.
🎀 There is a growing trend of backing up files to cloud storage. If you have an AOMEI account, you can back up your files to AOMEI Cloud. After you sign up for an AOMEI account, it gives you 1TB of free storage space for 15 days.
Final Words
This article gives you four ways to solve the "My laptop keeps freezing and not responding" problem. You can try each of them to get your computer back to a normal working state. However, it is recommended that you back up your computer before proceeding. The free backup software mentioned in the article - AOMEI Backupper Standard can not only help you backup, but also help you clone your disk. This feature is very useful when you plan to upgrade your computer disk. Just download it and try it!
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