What Does “Not Responding” Mean?

⌛ "Not Responding" is Windows' way of telling you that a program might have a problem. Sometimes Not Responding benign and sometimes it's a sign of a deeper issue.

⌛ Not responding
“Not responding” happens when a program stops interacting with Windows properly. This can be due to legitimate delays, if the program is busy working, or to errors like a programming bug, design error, hardware problem, malware, and more.

Chapters
0:00 Not Responding
1:00 Programs are expected to respond to Windows
1:45 Legitimate delays
3:39 Internet issues
4:28 Not-so-legitimate causes
5:00 Software design error
5:35 Hardware
6:00 Malware

More Ask Leo!

#askleo #slow #computer

[kensmith]

The worst thing you can do is to sit there and watch it! It will drive you crazy! Get up and walk around for 5 or 10 minutes. Chances are that any button or mouse click you make won't help or it'll make things worse. If it's still doing it after 30 minutes or so (depending on the application), then think about killing the process.

[JimE]

I have the "not responding" issue with Thunderbird. It almost always happens when I highlight a message and hit "delete". If I wait, 5-10 sec, it will come back. Thanks. JimE

[NoEggu]

I have been accused of not responding.

[davebeedon]

I encounter this problem when trying to quickly perform certain tasks in Adobe Lightroom on a Windows PC. It might be related to having too little memory. Slowing down my actions avoids the problem.

[dantodd]

I found Dropbox the cause of the problem. I've sense canceled the program and the [problem went away.

[larrylambert]

I have an older laptop. If I start Excel before startup is finished, Excel stalls. I just wait.