What is happening to your computer when it sticks and freezes?

Answer 1

Computers are very temperamental. If, your computer freezes up on you, and it does happen sometimes, simply push the power button to turn off the computer. This could also be a clue that you have picked up a virus so power off immediately. Wait a few minutes then power back on and see what happens. Stay off of porn sites, sexually explicit sites because you will get a virus for sure.

What is usually happening is that a program has made an illegal call. By that I mean, that it is sending an instruction to a part of the compter that cannot understand it.

It can be busy doing something else, or the instruction is not what was expected.

Mostly, programmers can include error checking in the program, that watches for these illegal calls and send an error report to the screen. Microsoft is not renowned for doing this.

Sometimes a bad instruction can cause a loop, where the answer to the instruction is to provide another instruction to act as an input and so it goes round in a loop.

Again there are safegurds built into some programs, which monitor how long it takes to perform and intervenes if this is too long.