S.O.S! (Save Our Systems)- Tip #2

Scenario: You enjoyed a fabulous spontaneous weekend getaway to one of the world’s hottest destinations: Miami, Florida. Instead of confining yourself to your beach front hotel room to work on your presentation that’s due Monday afternoon, you indulge in a marathon shopping spree followed-up by a full day at the Elemis Spa located in the heart of South Beach. Feeling refreshed and energized, you cap off your vacation with a night of dancing and romancing up and down the strip. Suddenly in the taxi on your way to the airport you realize that you have not completed your presentation. Where did the time go?! You have always worked well under pressure, so rather than panic you devise a strategy. If you get an early start on Monday your presentation could be finished by lunch time, which would leave you an hour to rehearse before the 2:00 PM deadline.

You arrive at the office on Monday at 6:00 AM, triple espresso in hand. You sit down at your desk, boot up your PC and double-click on Microsoft PowerPoint to begin developing your presentation slides. The application does not open, so you double-click again. You immediately assume the worse and your heart rate quickens. The impending doom of your crashing PC is direct punishment for your frivolous weekend of unbridled fun.

But seriously, there may be no need for your blood pressure to rise. Consider She-Tech S.O.S. Tip #2 provided by the experts at PCWorld.

Tip #2: Regardless of what operating system you use, in general, whenever you repeatedly double-click a program icon without results, the first thing you should suspect is a hung application. A hung application is an annoying problem, but is far less severe than a complete system crash.

In Windows XP and 2000, right-click the Windows taskbar and click Task
Manager on the context menu. Select the Processes tab in the application window,
and click the list box column head labeled Image Name to sort the list of
running applications by name. Find the application you want to run. In many
cases two, three, or more instances will appear, as shown in FIGURE 1.

Right-click the offending application and choose End Process. Make sure to click
OK to confirm your choice. Repeat these steps until all instances of the program
are shut down. Close Task Manager and start the application again.

Unfortunately, Windows 98 and Me don't offer control over running processes. To
clear a frozen application, press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to bring up the Close Program
dialog box. Highlight the application and click the End Task button; you may
have to wait several seconds before it takes effect.

When these stressful moments arise, just take a deep breath and exercise a little patience. Within a few minutes you should be able to begin creating your presentation. Technology isn’t perfect, but like all tech-savvy divas, we never let them see us sweat. Continue to live it up, stay cool and stay connected!