What to Do When Your Laptop Hangs? (7 Laptop Hang Solutions)

Laptop Hanging Issue

If you have been using a laptop long time, you may face the irritating laptop hang issue. The PC keeps freezing when you are in the middle of something critical. Sometimes while your laptop gets hanged, the device slows down or seriously becomes fully unresponsive. This is incredibly frustrating and poses a huge problem to your productivity if you are getting some critical work done.

Why is your laptop hanging? Excess of tasks, overheating, insufficient RAM, malware attacks, hard drive failure, etc. can trigger the laptop hanging problem. Then, what to do when your laptop hangs or the laptop screen freezes? Top 7 laptop hang solutions will be introduced below.

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What to Do When Laptop Hangs

#1. Basic Fixes

Most of the time, a laptop hangs a lot because a specific process or app eats up too much resources of RAM and CPU, causing the entire system hanging issue. In such a situation, wait 5-10 minutes to see if it can do the trick.

Or when your laptop is hanging too much, restarting Windows 11/10 is a good option. Now, press the Power button for a few seconds. If these simple fixes cannot work, try other workarounds.

#2. Close Unused Apps in the Background

When it comes to “what to do when laptop hangs”, one important thing you should try is to check if many unnecessary apps or processes run in the background, taking up the most RAM/CPU resources. Then, close them.

Step 1: Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager. If this cannot work, press Ctrl + Alt + Del to open a screen and choose Task Manager.

Step 2: Determine which programs are consuming a large amount of RAM & CPU, then choose them one by one and click End task.

#3. Press Windows + Ctrl + Shift + B

What to do if laptop hangs?

There is a specific keyboard shortcut – Windows + Ctrl + Shift + B that can help when the laptop stuck issue or system hanging happens. This shortcut restarts the graphics card driver to force Windows to refresh the screen. A short beep sound will appear and the screen will flicker. Then, everything is back to normal.

#4. Update Windows

Speaking of “what to do when laptop screen freezes or hangs”, you also should consider updating Windows, especially when you haven’t installed Windows updates for a long time. So, go to Windows Settings > Windows Update/Update & Security > Windows Update, check for available updates and then download & install them.

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#5. Run Antivirus Software

If your laptop keeps hanging, freezing, or getting stuck, it is a good idea to check for a virus or malware infection since the PC is constantly exposed to the internet. Windows Security, which comes preinstalled on your computer, can perform a full scan to fix your laptop hanging issue.

Step 1: Open Windows Security via the search box.

Step 2: Navigate to Virus & threat protection > Scan options.

Step 3: Check Full scan and click Scan now.

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#6. Cool Down Your Laptop

What to do when laptop hangs due to the overheating problem? You should check if there are dusts to obstruct the air vents. If yes, clear them. Or, you can purchase a cooling pad to provide additional cooling. Besides, put your laptop on a hard or flat surface for good heat dissipation.

#7. Check Your Hard Drive

A faulty hard drive may slow down your PC and seriously, the laptop gets hanged/stuck. Fortunately, you can easily check your hard drive in Windows 11/10 File Explorer.

Step 1: Open File Explorer, right-click on the drive you want to check, and choose Properties.

Step 2: Under the Tools tab, click Check > Scan drive.

Alternatively, you can run the professional partition manager – MiniTool Partition Wizard and use it Surface Test to check if the disk has bad sectors.

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If the disk is failing, remember to back up your important disk data by running the free backup software – MiniTool ShadowMaker. This tool offers powerful features to back up files and clone a disk for disk backup/upgrade. Get this software and follow the guide – What to Do If I Find Bad Sectors on Hard Drive in Windows 10/8/7.

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Other Laptop Hang Solutions

What to do when your laptop hangs? Besides these common tips to address the laptop stuck issue, you can try some other troubleshooting tips:

• Add more RAM
• Update drivers
• Run memory check
• Run System File Checker
• Perform a system restore
• Clear cache and unneeded Files

Verdict

When discussing “what to do when laptop hangs” or “when laptop hangs what to do”, you may have been plagued by this annoying laptop hang issue and looking for solutions. Take it easy if your laptop hangs a lot and multiple tips can help you. Take action!