Non Responding programs?

Question

When working on some applications say Word or Excel ,sometimes the entire application gets stuck and the message "Not Responding" appears.Why does it happen?Can anyone specify the related technical details?

Answer 1

Technically, you'll get "Not responding" after the application's event queue has had more than a certain number of events in it and not cleared it in a while. Why? Because the application is waiting for something else or is not clearing the event queue because it's in an unbreakable loop somewhere.

Generally, most well-written apps will not wait for long runnig functions to finish before continuing, but sometimes it becomes unavoiable. Word, as an example, waits for a print to spool before it returns control to you. If you've setup printing to not spool, or have one of those cheap printers with a bad driver, Word will wait for the whole thing to print, and will say "Not Responding" if you click on it. It's OK. It hasn't crashed, it's just waiting.

Sometimes it's waiting for things that will never happen, and that's when it's crashed.

Answer 2

It means your application get corrupted. Lack of RAM or Disk space most often causes this problem, or you are running multiple applications simultaneously.

Another common reason for this problem to occur is viruses and spyware, like smiley problems that interfere with other programs.

Answer 3

You might be running low on resources or memory. When it freezes up again, try hitting CTRL + ALT + DEL. It should show up a Task Manager. Click on the Performance tab and see how much memory is being used. If it is more than your computer has, then try adding more memory to your system to make it faster.

Answer 4

Try to save your information as you go, so you don't lose it all. It can be cause by virus or the computer may just need to be shut down completely and then start over. Good luck.