Solved How to avoid hard rebooting in case of OS unresponsivity?

I am aware of the CTRL+ALT+DEL combination, and the ability to kill and re-run explorer.exe. But this is not always enough.
For example, my Windows once hanged during rebooting to install updates. It kept displaying the message "Do not poweroff the computer, installing update 1 of 1" for a few hours. Not knowing what to do, I resorted to holding that power button for a few seconds...
In such case, if I'm not mistaken, CTRL+ALT+DEL won't work. So, just to be on the safe side: In case of real trouble, how to avoid having to hard reboot the PC?
Is there, for example, any equivalent of the Linux Raising Elephants combination? Or are there any other ways to do this?

Thanks in advance.

In some cases, depending on what section of the OS or the system itself is locked up, you might be able to gain remote access and then "gracefully" shut down Windows and the computer from there, instead of force crashing it with the power button. But, this requires networking and other functions are still working, not frozen - and they may be locked up too. And, you would have to have remote access setup and functional full time (since you cannot predict when the lockup will happen) before the problem occurs. And from a security standpoint, that is NOT acceptable to me.

So, that being the case, I recommend waiting it out to see if Windows can sort itself out. But if no luck after 1 hour, killing the power and forcing a hard-crash is your only option. Of course, that is not ideal either because that can result in corrupt system files and an unbootable system - but then if your system is already hung, that may already be a problem. That just illustrates another reason why we should ALWAYS have a current backup of any data we don't want to lose.

If you are still having problems with Windows Update, see How do I reset Windows Update components?

If this sort of thing is happening on a regular basis, I would try and find out the reason why. Could be anything from malware, registry cleaner damage, bad hardware, or pick some combo of the above and/or others. Point is, the things you describe should be a once every couple blue moon occurrence at most, so if it's happening more frequently for you, something is causing it and finding that something is the key to preventing it. I'd start with checking for malware, make sure you run multiple programs before declaring yourself free of anything. Then if you have recently, or at some point in the past, been a user of registry cleaning software, odds are the damage is done and you're looking at a complete OS reinstall to fix it. Best case scenario, those programs have no noticeable effect, but all too often they will royally screw things up. Considering the only things they seem to be good for is keeping people doing tech support for a living gainfully employed and allowing the know-it-all types, who know nothing, to self-identify, they're best avoided. Then you get to bad hardware. I frequently tell people that the butcher's bill will be paid and he'll either take cash up front or the installment plan of pain and misery.. You buy some cheap $200 laptop, you have opted for the installment plan and can expect routine problems with the unit. You buy a $2,000 unit, fewer corners will be cut during production and you'll get a much better overall unit in pretty much every way possible. It doesn't scale as well at the top end, but the old adage about getting what you pay for is still something you should keep in mind every time you buy something. You buy cheap, you get cheap.

Brink said:

   Warning

Thread cleaned up.

Let's keep this discussion friendly shall we.

Click to expand...

Actually, this thread got derailed BIG time. I had to go back to first post just to see what's it all about !!!!
Since OP never showed up after first post I guess we scared him and he hightailed it as far and fast as possible.

Well... I just didn't want to interrupt your discussion out there, I don't consider myself a registry-expert so I couldn't support any of those two opinions

BTW, no I didn't use CCleaner or anything of this sort recently (meaning on this Windows install...) But yes, I get OS breakdowns far too often. I'm fed up with constant reinstalls. I'm also fed up with having to replace damaged RAM or HDD. Yes, it might be true that I just buy too cheap; my point was that since I didn't need a gaming computer, then I didn't to buy expensive graphic cards or processors...

Because of my needs, I have to have both Windows and some Linux distro installed; both systems were getting damaged just as often. Sometimes, I knew it was me screwing things up, sometimes I knew that hardware got out-of-order again, and sometimes I really didn't know what was going on, so I resorted to reinstall.

Why, even now I have two laptops, each one of them suffering some problems. One has Windwos 7 unbootable (for some weird reason Linux Mint still works... the laptop's HDD isn't very healthy, maybe that's the reason? whew, that particular unit has been in the warranty service three times already, now the 2 years time is up...). The second one has THREE systems installed - Linux Mint, Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 - and guess what, Windows 8 bootloader is screwed up already; I am still able to boot whatever I want to, but not without problems. I don't know what's the reason, perhaps I'll have to find out how to reinstall the bootloader, and maybe do the standard memtesting86+ and HDTuning...I don't know, are there any other hardware parts I should test and what programs should I use to test tchem?

All of this would rather fit as sepparate threads, however... Back to the topic, then. Well, I find this pretty weird that Windows doesn't have any Last Resolve recovery means... Why? Is this a design choice?

Anyway, many thanks for the information you've proveided.

Honestly, given some of this new information, I'd get an electrician out to your place to make sure the wiring's good and you're getting the proper voltages from every outlet. For you to have that many different systems all suffer that many hardware issues there has to be some kind of common source and a lot of those issues could be explained by "chunky" electricity.