Sometimes, the bar at the bottom of your desktop freezes and refuses to respond. Your mouse pointer works but it won’t pop up anything after you click several times. Even Windows key(nor ‘Ctrl + Esc’ that works the same as ‘Win’ key) won’t work. Neither ‘Ctrl + Alt + Del’ for bringing up security menu nor ‘Ctrl + Shift + Esc’ for Task Manager would work. So what should you do?

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METHOD #1: Restart Windows Explorer(File Explorer) in Task Manager

The main reason why the entire bar froze is because the Windows Explorer(File Explorer) has stopped working. So, we can try restarting it manually by literally pressing the restart button:

• Press and hold ‘Win + R’ to open ‘Run’ window on your bottom-left corner. Type ‘taskmgr’ and press ‘Enter’ to open Task Manager.

• Scroll all the way down or just simply search ‘Windows Explorer’ in the search bar.

• You would see ‘Windows Explorer’ under the ‘Windows Processes’ category. Click on it and click on ‘Restart task’ button.

METHOD #2: Manually End the Windows Explorer and Start it again

Normally, restarting it would work 90% of time. But if it’s hardly stuck or showing no sign of refresh, this should do the job:

• While the Task Manager is still open, press and hold ‘Win + R’ to open ‘Run’ window, or press ‘Run new task’ button if it refuses to open up.

• Type ‘taskkill /f /im explorer.exe /t’ and press ‘Enter’. You would now see your desktop screen going either completely white or black(depending on the theme you’re using).

• Click on ‘Run new task’ button again and type ‘start explorer.exe’ then press ‘Enter’.

• If it successfully responds, you would see your screen going back to normal and your icons at the bar being responsive again.

METHOD #3: Force Restart

If it still fails to respond regardless of the methods used above, you have no choice but to force restart:

• Try pressing and holding ‘Alt + F4’ to see if Power Off Options window pops up. If it somehow does, select ‘Restart’ option and press ‘Enter’.

• As it won’t show up most of the time, if it won’t, click on ‘Run new task’ button, then type ‘shutdown /r /t 00’. Pressing ‘Enter’ after that would immediately force your computer to restart.

• If you’ve already closed the Task Manager while your screen is still completely white or black, there are literally no other ways to open any other programs. Head to your PC/Laptop’s power button and press and hold for 10 seconds until it shuts down. For good deeds, wait for 10 seconds before turning it back on.

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Knowing some skills like this is very helpful especially when you cannot browse through the internet cause your programs won’t respond. If you’re already familiar with some of the commands in CMD, you can almost always get yourself out from this situation.