What is the Best Thing to Do When Your Laptop Suddenly Stops Working

At one time or another, someone who owns a laptop – usually one that is around 2 years and older – is working or just browsing on the laptop when it suddenly just conks out, completely turning itself off. The natural thing to do is to turn it on again, right? What if it turns itself off again? What do you do in this situation?

Try System Restore

Sometimes it’s not really your laptop that conks out but it’s Windows. It might just ground to a halt and won’t respond. After you restart your laptop and encounter the same problem, you might need to reset Windows as your only option. It won’t wipe away your files and it’s safe. It simply restores all systems on your computer when a particular ‘restore point’ was taken. You can launch System Restore from the Start Menu or the Start menu search box.

If your screen went blank but the power and battery indicator are still glowing

On top of this, you can hear the laptop humming and the hard drive spinning; you can try taking the battery and charger out, hold the power button for up to 1 minute and then tap it off and on for another minute. Allow the laptop to sit without battery power for 20 minutes and then boot up. This apparently gets rid of any static build up that is the cause of your laptop going blank or preventing further booting.

Try simply booting up without the battery

With laptops that are more than 3 years old, sometimes, the battery may be going away, and so is incapable of giving enough stored power to the laptop. Try removing the battery and then booting up using only AC power with your charger and cord. If you booted successfully, it’s time to replace your battery.

It may just need cooling off

Laptops that are more than 3 years old may tend to heat up faster, especially if there isn’t proper ventilation to allow its heat to escape and dissipate. Try cooling off the laptop for 10 – 15 minutes and then boot up. Before booting up, try putting a fan underneath and another beside it so it can stay cool faster when you’ve been working for hours on it.

Use your computer’s recovery tool

If your computer is supplied with a recovery tool or recovery partition (part of the hard drive), then you can activate this and restore your laptop to an as-new state and fix any software problems in the process. However, everything you’ve stored on your laptop since you first bought it will be lost because the restoration processor will create a fresh version of Windows, along with any pre-installed software from the manufacturer. So it’s vital that you back up anything you want to keep before selecting this option.

The best option is still a computer tech support company

When all is said and done and you don’t know or aren’t sure how to handle the above, you can always call for computer tech support and let the professionals handle it. It’s worth the time and effort after all.

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