Are you having problems opening an application on your computing device? Closing an application? Is your cursor not moving? Is there something else happening with your computing device that leads you to be believe that your computing device isn’t working?
The first thing to do is to restart your computing device. If you can’t get your device to respond so that you can restart it, then you must power off your device. For desktops and laptops, you will need to hold down the power button until the device turns off. You may have to hold the button down for more than five seconds.
For cell phones and tablets, you will need to power down your device as you normally would. If your device won’t power down, you may need to use another device to search for instructions to force the device to turn off.
Once the device is powered off, wait ten seconds and then turn the device back on.
The process of turning a device off and then back on works because it reinitializes the device’s software. This simple process fixes about 80% of the problems that cause a computing device to stop working.
If the above process does not fix your computing device’s problem, there are volunteers who will help. To find a volunteer who will help you with your device, go to the Get Help Overview page, click on the link for your device and find a volunteer who will help you.