How to Turn Off a Laptop When It Is Frozen

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Keep the laptop on a cool surface to stop overheating.

Frozen laptops occur when the processor is trying to work through too much data or when the laptop begins to overheat. Other reasons include virus, adware and malware infections. It is very frustrating when the screen, keyboard and mouse freeze. This makes it nearly impossible for a soft-shutdown, which is accomplished by software control. Instead, the user must make a hard-shutdown, which may not be good for the hard drive, but is the only option in this situation.

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Step 1

Set the laptop on a hard surface in a cool area for 30 minutes to see if the laptop unfreezes. If it does unfreeze, then the processor was heated up, overworked and had to catch up with the user requests. Save all the work and immediately restart the laptop to clear the RAM memory.

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Step 2

Press the power button on the laptop and hold it down for a count of 30. The laptop should turn off, but if it does not, then try again for a count of 60. Once shut off, let the computer sit until the bottom is cool, and restart like normal.

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Step 3

Remove the power cord from the back of the laptop as a last resort. Tilt the computer on its side and press the battery release buttons. Remove the battery pack from under the computer. Wait for a minute so the computer fully dumps its temporary memory.

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Step 4

Replace the battery in the same way that it came out of the bottom of the laptop. Hook the power cord back up and restart the computer. The laptop should boot up like normal.

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Step 5

Run the antivirus program on the computer to see if the freezing was caused by malicious software. Remove any found virus, adware and malware programs.

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