Programs not responding in Windows 10/8/7

Martin6

4 years ago

programs-not-responding-windows-10-1-5943967

At times, you may have seen a message that some program had stopped responding on your Windows computer. The reasons for such Programs not responding or Program has stopped working or responding message could be many and there the troubleshooting options different too. We have already covered the following subjects:

Today we will take a look at some other common scenarios where you may encounter a Program not responding message.

programs-not-responding-windows-10-1-5943967

Programs not responding in Windows

If a Program is not responding, it means that a problem has occurred in the program and it is, therefore, interacting more slowly than usual with Windows. You can choose to wait for it to start working automatically or you can terminate or kill the process.

The probable cause for this are:

Lack of computer resources available for the program to start or run properly
Computer infected with malware
Conflict between two software
Incompatibility with the operating system version
File or registry entries of the program may have been corrupted

The actions you could take if you face such a situation are:

Terminate or kill the program process
Full scan your PC with your antivirus software.
Relaunch the program and see if it work
Restart the computer and see if it runs properly
See if the problem occurs when you boot in Clean Boot State. Here you can manually try and identify conflicts.
Reinstall the software
Disable hardware graphics acceleration and see.
If the program uses add-ins or extensions, start the program in Safe Mode and see. If need be, check the add-ins and disable or remove the offenders. To run a program in No add-ons mode or Safe Mode, you usually open the Run box, type the name/executable of the program and use the /safe parameter. Eg. outlook /safe.
Try and increase the RAM.

One last thing! You could also optimize the computer for performance. Clean up Disk Space, uninstall unwanted programs, run the Program & System Maintenance Troubleshooters.

Open an elevated Command Prompt, type the following and hit Enter to run the Performance Troubleshooter.

msdt.exe /id PerformanceDiagnostic

This troubleshooter helps the user adjust settings to improve operating system speed and performance.

Printer not responding

If you receive a Printer not responding message run the Printer Troubleshooter and see. Make sure that you are using the latest version of the Printer Driver.