The worst thing a computer can do to us is when we are doing work on it, and suddenly the computer hangs. Some of us stare at the screen in horror while others bang the keyboard in frustration, and most of us focus our wills fiercely at the computer to start responding again.

Depending on what the causes of the computer hangs are, it may or may not require a computer restart. For a start, try opening the task manager by pressing the keys Control+Alternate+Delete. If the task manager responds and shows up, close programs one by one, starting with those that are not essential and see if the computer recovers. If it does, save your work and restart the system immediately.

In the event that the computer doesn't respond to anything you do, you may have to force the computer to shut down. You can do this by holding the power button of your computer for about 10 seconds. The power to the computer will be cut and you can then start the computer up in Safe Mode.

Once you are in Safe Mode, be sure to do a disk error check for potential problems. You can do this by running Chkdsk from My Computer or from Windows Explorer. Chkdsk scans the hard disk for errors tries to repair them. It can repair problems caused by bad sectors, lost clusters, and other similar errors.

Once Chkdsk is done, it's time to perform maintenance on your registry. Try restarting your computer to boot up normally, if not you can stay in Safe Mode while you run a registry cleaner. A registry cleaner will scan the entire Windows registry and look for errors and fix them. The most common cause of computer hangs is due to faulty information inside the registry. The registry is constantly read and modified so it's important to perform regular maintenance on it using a registry cleaner. A clean registry will help the computer become more stable.