Troubleshooting Tips September 17 2014

It's a Secret (Don't tell your friends)!

Speaker: (He who cannot be named)

What if my computer just stops working? What can I do?

Have you heard of the 3 finger salute?

No these guys haven't or perhaps Mr Spock invented it! But these 3 guys below definitely mean business.

That's why this little chap shot through:

But seriously (impossible!), we need a hard Task Master, I mean Task Manager to help us fix up programs that are broke.

Task Manager shows you the programs, processes, and services that are currently running on your computer. You can use Task Manager to monitor your computer’s performance or to close a program that is not responding.

• Open Task Manager by right-clicking the taskbar and then clicking Task Manager, Or
• You can also open Task Manager by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL keys all at once.

Windows 7 Task Manager

When you hit the 3 magic keys all at once you see this screen:

Clicking Start Task Manager, then choose the Applications tab, you can see which program is not working.

Highlight this task by clicking on it with your mouse, then hit the End Task button once and wait, sometimes 30 seconds until it disappears, and the problem is fixed.

Windows 8 Task Manager

From the pretty Apps screen you can just type Task Manager as follows:

Or use your 3 fingers on Ctrl+Alt+Del and you will see the following:

Click Task Manager and cross your fingers (always works for me!). 

Choose the Processes tab.

Now select the task which is not working, e.g. Microsoft Word, and then the End Task button and viola, or violin depending on the song.

What about tablets and smartphones?

The Android tablet and the Apple iPad, and smartphones, have a powerful multitasking Operating System (OS), but this can occasionally lead to too many open programs. While they are fairly efficient at pausing apps that don’t need to be open, sometimes you need to close all those running programs yourself.Here's how to do it.

For an Apple iPad or iPhone:

Prior to iOS 7, to close a running app, you could double-tap the home button, which would reveal a row of quivering icons representing running apps. A tap on one of those icons would then close that particular app. However, with the release of iOS 7, that behavior is no longer available. Fortunately, the developers of iOS have seen to it to make the process much easier.


If you double-tap the home button, a preview of each running app will still appear. Note: if you have Multitasking Gestures enabled you can simply swipe up the screen with 4 fingers (is that a salute?).

As well as the icon, you also get a larger thumbnail of what was on screen when you last used the app, so it’s easier to see at a glance which app is which.

To close an app, you simply swipe upwards on the thumbnail to dismiss it 

For Android devices:

Press and hold the "Recently Used Apps Button". A menu will appear with a list of your recently-used apps.

Close active applications by tapping on an app and swiping it either to the left or right side.

Google Tablets

Your Google tablet comes with a handy widget which lets you kill all running tasks. This is great if you want to quickly free up some memory.

To use the widget, press and hold for 2 seconds on a blank part of any homescreen. Then find the Program monitor widget and drag it on to your homescreen. Once that is done, press the widget and it will show you all currently running Apps. Press End all to close all running Apps.