A Useful Keyboard Command To Unfreeze Your Computer

A little-known shortcut that will restart your video drivers without a Restart

Published on January 24, 2022 By DrJBHL In Personal Computing

Got this little gem in my email.

I can't tell you how many times my screen has frozen and I resorted to Restart (losing all the work I did up to the freeze). Had I known this trick, the air in the room would have had a far less blue tint.

So much for cliff hangers...

"To reset your graphics drivers when your computer is frozen, press the following key combination: Win + Ctrl + Shift + B ." - MUO

What's so great about this command is that all the apps currently open remain unaffected: Only your video driver is restarted.

"This only works on Windows 8 and newer, so Windows 7 users can't take advantage of it. However, it will work no matter what kind of video card you have. Nvidia, AMD, and even Intel integrated graphics will reset with this shortcut." - ibid

There are other reasons why computers freeze. I suggest reading the article because it has good tips on how to progress in troubleshooting the freeze. Here's a link to read about further steps to take.

How to stop an app without Task Manager: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-kill-unresponsive-programs-without-the-task-manager/

How to open task manager to stop nonresponding programs: Ctrl + Shift + Esc .

Comments

Jafo

on Jan 24, 2022

Interesting Command....I'm about to bin an old laptop because it's having a 'freeze'...tho I expect it's a capacitor on the MoBo going rogue.....

....but who knows? ...

naroon1

on Jan 24, 2022

Thanks' for the tip, since moving to Enterprise editions of my OSs some years ago i have very few crashes these days, but we all get them at some point, cheers for the heads up, i am sure it will come in useful.

BlackSmokeDMax

on Jan 26, 2022

Very nice, thanks!

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!